


Melt Your Clocks

by harcourt



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Altered States, Angst, Asphyxiation, Branding, Captivity, Dom/sub, Dream Control, Dreams and Nightmares, Force-Feeding, Hand Feeding, Humiliation, Hurt/Comfort, I wrote this for the kinkmeme, M/M, Mind Control, Mindfuck, Object Insertion, Painplay, Past Mind Control, Piercings, Psychological Torture, Punishment, Sensation Play, Sleep, Sleep Deprivation, Solitary Confinement, Spanking, Training, Trauma, Whump, bad!Loki, deteriorating mental state, past trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-05-15 12:25:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 47,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5785261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harcourt/pseuds/harcourt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt:</p><p>
  <i>So, post-movie, whenever Loki gets bored with his imprisonment, he can calmly and easily pay a little visit to Clint's mind and Dom the fuck out of him. For Clint, these sessions take the form of very realistic, vivid, dreams/vision type things. Usually while he is asleep, but occasionally Loki will pop up while he is wide awake (it is 'all in Clint's head' so even if others are present while Loki is taunting him, whispering to him, no one else can see him).</i>
</p><p>The entirety of SHIELD, just about, had looked into Clint's head and determined that Loki was gone. That Natasha's applied blunt force trauma had been enough, and that Clint was safe, and not a security risk, and in the clear.</p><p>Either the entirety of SHIELD was wrong, or Clint is losing his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tags to be added as the fic continues, but this is a 'bad things happen to Clint' fic, so be warned that things get worse and it's noncon all the way down.

The first time it happens, Clint's running in the street, through some mash-up version of woods he used to spend summers exploring jumbled together with stickball stories he's sure he's absorbed from Steve. The New York sidewalk the trees are sprouting from seem decidedly period, and cast in muted, old movie colors. Faded browns and blues, the way Clint always imagines history. A warm, golden tint to everything.

He's having fun--he's not sure doing what. Just that he's running and yelling. Maybe he's playing ball. Maybe Steve is around somewhere, small and hacking up a lung and jealously watching Clint race through the city-woods-neighborhood, so fast that the wind stings his face like it does when he's got a high perch in bad weather, whipping his voice away.

It's part Avenger dream, then. Maybe part SHIELD dream, except that he's dressed like himself, in sneakers and hooded sweatshirt instead of his Hawkeye getup. Maybe he is playing ball, Clint thinks, giddy, he's good at ball. Maybe it's not Steve out there, but Sitwell, or Coulson. They'd fit right into his history-stuff colored New York City woods, especially if they're dressed like pictures he's seen of Steve. In newsboy caps and suspenders.

It's hilarious. Clint really hopes they're out there, looking just like that. He's going to kick their asses so bad at whatever game they're playing, when he finds them.

He's slowed to a jog, cutting through some neighborhood with close streets, looking around at the cars and old timey newsstands, when tile erupts from the road under his feet, unfolding like a flower at first, then like a Jacob’s ladder, clacking outward away from him, covering the street and then the sidewalks, and then, somehow, the newsstands and light posts and mailboxes, leaving a flat checkered floor where there'd been city. Leaving Clint standing there under the sky. The light falling on him is still mottled even though the woods are also gone.

"Steve?" He jogs a bit further, then slows, then stops, unsure of where to go. "Coulson?"

There's a chuckle, coming from nowhere. The expanse of floor is still empty, for as far as Clint can see, all the way to the oddly flat horizon.

"Sitwell?" Clint tries doubtfully. The chuckle chuckles again, and then again when Clint walks and stops and then just stands there shifting his weight uncertainly. The expanse of tile looks the same in every direction. No sun or moon or anything to navigate by. Nothing to give him a clue to where he is, or where he should go.

"Oh well," a smooth voice says, when Clint's stood there in confusion for a while. It sounds patiently exasperated. A little disappointed, like Clint's messed up some very obvious instruction. "You do need to be told what to do, don't you?"

It doesn't sound like Sitwell or Coulson, but it's familiar. Clint cocks his head a little, trying to pinpoint a direction. Work out where the voice is coming from.

"But you're good at listening. Or you were. Don't worry," Loki murmurs, stepping out of nowhere. "We'll work on it."

"Oh, great," Clint says. "This is just what I fucking need."

"You used to have manners, too," Loki sighs. "Good thing I have nothing but time on my hands."

"Where's my goddamn city?" Clint demands. "I was--" playing paintball, maybe. Winning something, for sure. "Where'd it--Where's Steve?"

Loki laughs. Smiles indulgently. If Clint didn't know he was a fucking psycho, it would be charming. There's something boyish and soft about it. Like he's genuinely happy to see Clint. Like they're old fucking friends. "We're here alone, I'm afraid."

"What? No alien horde? That's a bit lonely. For you, I mean."

"Mm." It's not agreement. Just a neutral sound. Thoughtful. "I thought that would be distracting," he says, finally. Like he's genuinely considered the point and come to a conclusion. "Maybe we can add some excitement later. When you've developed more focus."

"My focus is fine, you ass."

Loki _mm_ -s again. This time it's doubtful.

Clint glares, but doesn't respond. Casts his gaze past Loki to check the horizon again. Loki sighs and snaps his fingers. "See what I mean? Eyes here, Hawkeye."

Clint glances, but only out of caution. Just in case Loki's summoned something, but he's still just standing there, wearing leather pants and a shirt with laces at the throat, like some Knights of the Round Table reject. There's no armor, no goat helmet, no staff. He does have very earthly fingerless gloves, knit like something Natasha might wear, but nothing that's a threat. He looks, mostly, kind of stupid.

"Ah, ah," Loki tuts, when Clint's attention flicks away again. This time, he reaches out to snap his fingers, then keeps snapping as he brings his hand up by his face. "Come on. This is why we have an empty room."

It's not a room. There's clouds scudding across the sky overhead, not like they're standing on a globe, but flat, like they're being projected onto a ceiling. There's something surreal about them, and the repetition in the patterns. It's not a great loop, is what Clint decides. If this was a security camera hack, any half decent junior agent would have noticed the cycling.

Loki sighs. "I thought a natural setting would be calming, but I guess it's still too much." He smiles at Clint again, "You're more easily distracted," he says, "than I remember. Without the staff to help." He thinks for a second, then adds, "And even then, I gave you direct orders that I don't think you listened to very well."

Clint picks a direction at random, and thinks about just hauling off. If he follows the straight line of the tile, he can avoid circling back on himself, even without any landmarks. Just keep going until he drops dead or the city comes back with maybe-Steve somewhere in it, waiting to turn big and join Clint in racing through the streets.

Loki snaps his fingers again, then claps, then claps louder, then lets his breath out in an annoyed huff. "But I see there's still too much to see, for you." He makes a small gesture with his head. An I-should-have-known move, coupled with a rueful throat noise. "My mistake."

The floor folds up in front of Clint, blocking his potential progress, then folds again when he turns, then again, until he's standing in a box, open at the top for just a moment until another section of tile folds over like a lid, shutting out his view of the sky. And then Loki steps in, opening a section of wall like a door and swinging it shut behind him. The black of the checkered tiles loosen, then run, across the ceiling and down the walls, pooling at the join of the floor and in the corners, then draining away as the tile lines heal over, leaving them in a smooth, white room. Flat, ambient light coming from nowhere.

"Better?" Loki asks spreading his hands to indicate the cell. It's not cramped, but it's not large either. Maybe fifteen feet square, and empty. Loki smiles, like he's just shown Clint to opulent quarters and is waiting for his reaction.

"What the fuck," Clint demands.

"Ah!" Loki sounds pleased. "There we are. Good."

"What the fuck," Clint repeats, with a little less heat and a bit more bafflement, watching as Loki paces across the room, then back, like he's the one being held instead of doing the holding. 

"Good," Loki repeats, after a couple more passes.

"Are you going to let me out? I was in the middle of something."

"Oh, yes." He says it like he's just realized that he's interrupted something more pleasant. "I'm sorry, Hawkeye. We have too much work to do for you to spend the time running around some ridiculous dreamland like a child." He sounds both scornful and fond, smile back again and disconcertingly warm. "You were playing a game, I believe?"

Clint glares.

"Don't worry. We'll have time for games. But first." He taps a wall with one knuckle. "You have to learn to pay attention."

"Fine. I'm paying attention. What are we doing in here? Disco music video?"

Loki laughs, even though Clint's pretty sure he doesn't actually know what disco is, or music videos. " _We_ aren't doing anything in here. _You_ , on the other hand, are going to sit in here until you learn your first lesson."

"I'll show you a lesson," Clint starts.

"Don't you want to know what it is?"

"Go fuck yourself."

"Well," Loki says, "I supposed you'll figure it out eventually. You're not too dim. As Midgardians go, at least."

"Thanks," Clint snaps, but Loki just knocks on the wall again, like he's at the door of someone's house, and steps out, leaving Clint alone in the white, empty box.

\-----

"Hello," Tony croons, and wiggles his fingertips annoyingly against Clint's head as he passes, on his way to the coffee machine. "Fun night? Late night? Late _and_ fun night?" he asks, as he rummages through a cabinet, finding the biggest mug.

"Og," Clint says, grumbling it into his elbow, draped over the counter with his face buried in his arm.

"Are you hung over enough to get the rest of us out of Steve's team spirit jumping jacks, or just yourself?"

Clint blinks, waits till Tony's poured himself a mug, then pushes his own over, as far as he can, nudging it with his fingers to get it as close to Tony as possible, and makes a low pleading noise.

"What a picture of dignity," Tony comments, but pours. "Where’s my phone when I need it. Sugar?"

"Everything," Clint mutters. "Then load it into an IV. Or one of those big syringes Bruce has. Then shoot it into my eye. I hear that's a faster hit."

"If you decide to test that theory," Tony tells him, "let me know how it goes."

Clint laughs, just to humor him, and mostly because Tony's obligingly stirring sugar and cream into his mug. When he's done, he pushes it back into Clint's reach, but just, then laughs when Clint gropes for it, fingertips scrabbling at the ceramic.

"Asshole."

"Hey," Tony says, but too casual and not like he's objecting. Directing it past Clint. "Hawkeye's fun today. Come look."

By his tone, it's either Natasha or Steve. Clint doesn't lift his head to check, but explains, "Couldn't sleep," anyway, even though it's not entirely true. "Had freaky dreams. I think I was playing stickball. With Coulson and Sitwell." He squints in thought. "Maybe it was paintball."

"Stickball?" It's Steve. He sounds kind of amused.

"I'd say my subconscious is trying to steal your life, but I think it was just too much of that pizza. I'm never letting Banner choose toppings again, and if you know what's good for you, you'll back me up on this."

"Oh, for _you_ he can put together full sentences," Tony says. Clint pushes himself to his elbows to glare, then decides it's too much trouble and reaches to reclaim his coffee instead. It's not bad. Tony's pretty great at coffee fixing.

"There were a lot of trees."

Steve takes a seat at the counter next to him, and leans forward to peer at Clint's face, assessing his condition. Clint tries a smile, but it feels tired and forced. "That doesn't sound that bad," Steve says, once he's decided that Clint's mostly alright.

"Then Loki showed up, and--" Clint holds his hands out with his palms facing each other, then moves them around like that, trying to indicate a box around his mug, but it seems awkward. Embarrassing, somehow. Too dumb to be upset about. "Even in my dreams, he's a psycho," he concludes, dropping his hands back to the counter.

"Oh," Steve says, sympathetically now. Clint waves a hand to brush it off. 

"It sounds stupid when I _say_ it," he says. "It was just weird, I guess."

"I had a dream about Rocket Girls," Tony offers, reaching past Clint to hand Steve a mug, then stays there. Leaning over the counter to wiggle his eyebrows at Clint, then tells Steve, "They're cheerleaders."

"Thanks, Tony."

"Think of it like a modern USO show."

"Steve knows what a cheerleader is," Clint snaps, not wanting to be stuck between them when the argument picks up and turns real.

"I'm caught up to about nineteen seventy-four now," Steve agrees. "But anything invented after that is touch and go."

"I'm not sure my dream girls have a _vintage_ ," Tony tells them. "They had more of a classic, timeless quality."


	2. Chapter 2

Clint's cube has a timeless quality. It also has the quality of utter emptiness, not even a sink or a mat to spruce the place up. There's no drain in the floor or seam where the walls meet. Instead, it's all a single smooth surface, curved like bent plastic at the joins. It's like being stuck inside a dice.

He could suffocate, Clint thinks, then dismisses the idea, because if there's no source of water, if that kind of deprivation is the game, then he's going to start having problems long before he gets to the end of his oxygen. 

It's not hot or cold, and Clint's wearing the same thing he'd been last time, running through the New York City woods, so at least he can strip off his sweatshirt and wad it up to use as a pillow. Once he's done that, there's nothing to do. No break in the bland monotony, even for food or water. Like everything in the cube is on pause, even Clint himself.

It's so boring it fucking hurts.

It also goes on for nights in a row, hours trickling by, slow as sludge, while Clint goes from patient irritation to kicking and clawing at the walls, to lying on his stomach staring at them. They're cool, smooth like the mugs in Tony's kitchen and dully reflective. Nothing to get a grip on, and not enough shine for Clint to see himself in. That's probably a good thing. Better than being trapped in a disorienting box of mirrors.

On the other hand, disorientation might be interesting. Anything would be an improvement over the blank white on every side of him. There's no difference between the ceiling, the walls, the floor, other than gravity keeping him stuck to a single surface. He wonders where the box is. If it's sitting out on the tile floor. If Loki's fakey-fake sky is still above him or if the paintball city is back, and this box is standing in the street or a park.

It's a possibility. It could be freestanding, like an actual, giant dice. Maybe the walls aren't even too thick.

"Steve?" Clint tries. "Steve!" Then he tries with his hands cupped around his mouth, trying to direct the volume, focus it to see if he can get his voice to reach the outside instead of echo around the cell. Then he throws himself at the wall, to see if he can tip the box. At least then he could lie on a different side of it. 

Nothing moves, and no answer comes back. Eventually Clint wears his voice out and jars his shoulder too badly to keep slamming it against the walls, and takes a break to lie on the floor. In the middle of the square, and then with his back against the wall and then with his head tucked into the corner of the room, with his arm thrown up to shield his face. Other than his own breathing, everything is quiet. Enough that his ears ring with it, after a while, and after that, he starts to wonder if there _is_ an outside to the box. 

Which leads to crazy existential thoughts that lead back to lying in the corner of the room, with his knees drawn up this time, and his face pushed into his sweater to block out the blank, smooth, white white white, and the flat, directionless light.

"Funny thing about dream time," Loki says, musing. Clint hadn't heard him come in. Maybe he'd just appeared. Maybe he's just a voice. He doesn't look to check. "It can really go on for as long as you want. Or as long as I want, as the case might be. You could have a whole life in a dream. Think about that."

Clint swallows. Rasps out, "Fuck off."

Loki makes an amused humming sound. Not even a chuckle. Something scrapes on the floor, then squeaks. Clint stays where he is, even if he probably looks more pathetic than resistant, curled up and tucked into the corner.

"Let me guess what you've been thinking. Not here," Loki explains. "but in the 'real' world." He pauses, then snorts dismissively. "Well, let's go with that. In the _real_ world, you're thinking that you talk to the monster too much and then drank a bit much too close to bed. Or maybe you've heard too much about searching through the ice from your friend, the _suit_." He says it playfully, relishing the nickname. Like he's been waiting to get to use it.

"Just 'cause you talk like Tony doesn't mean you're down with the kids," Clint tells him, still without moving.

"And now your mind's combined them and made this--" A pause, to make a gesture Clint doesn't turn to see. "Little place. A cage, frozen in time. All so logical." Another pause. "When you're not here, at least." 

Clint doesn't mean to give him any response, but a breath catches in his throat, and he swallows. Loud enough in the silent room that Loki can't miss it.

"But when you're here," he says, " _Here_ , it's not so easy to explain away, is it?" There's a tapping noise. Fingers drumming against something solid. Then he says, "I'm in a cage too, so don't think I don't understand the boredom. It's very tedious, isn't it?"

Clint groans and shifts his arm so it's covering his ear. Loki ignores it.

"Luckily," he starts, then lets it trail off. "Well, I explained how time can work here." He makes a pleased sound. "And it's very real, isn't it?"

\-----

When Clint finally uncurls and looks over, Loki's gone, and the room is empty again. As harassment goes, annoying monologues are pretty mild, but the room feels even emptier after them. The silence more oppressive. Clint kills some time holding his head in his hands, and some more with his hands over his ears to try to make ocean sounds, then goes back to lying on the floor, with his feet propped against the wall, then just sprawled out flat. The frozen time thing is bad. If he'd get hungry or need to piss, at least it would be something, but every second in the box could be any other second. Even his stubble isn't growing.

"Let me out," Clint yells, against the floor this time, not that sure about directions anymore. "Bruce! Steve! I'm here!" His throat hurts. At least that's a change. "I'm over here. Come on." He lifts and drops his head, thumping it against the floor. "Fucking come for me already, you assholes."

Then there's pacing. And throwing a shoe against the ceiling in case he has upstairs neighbors, followed by hours that he spends on his belly, scraping at the corner with the zipper pull of his sweatshirt, getting nowhere, but convincing himself there's a scratch, maybe. A bit. 

Loki comes back while he's on his knees, picking at raw fingers and scowling at the spot at the base of the wall where really nothing's changed at all. If he'd known Loki was about to show up, he wouldn't have let himself get as close to frustrated rage as he is. He's caught off guard enough that reeling it in results in a snuffling sound, and wiping the burn from his eyes probably gives him dead away.

"A whole life," Loki comments, picking up where he'd left off. "Enjoying your time?"

"Fuck you." Clint's voice is rough. He doesn't turn around. Keeps staring into his corner, even though the sound of Loki moving around behind him makes the skin of his neck prickle.

"Still so distracted."

Clint doesn't answer.

"Maybe this room is too big. There's not much to look at, but still. Maybe there's too much space. Too much light."

"What do you want from me?" 

Loki doesn't answer, but he does snap his fingers again, the way he had the first time he'd shown up. After the long silences, the sharp sound makes Clint flinch and after a couple more repetition, he turns to see what Loki's doing. 

Which is just holding his arm out, like he's summoning a cat. Clint's gaze flicks automatically from that to his face, trying to read intent.

"See? Very good," Loki says, as soon as he does, and drops his arm again. Clint tracks him as he moves away, along one wall until he's diagonally opposite Clint, as far away as he can get in the small space. "Progress."

"You're an asshole," Clint tells him. "A weird, freaky asshole."

Loki doesn't dignify it. "You can wake up back in here," he says, calm, "or in a much emptier place." Clint's not sure how that's possible. He's also sure he doesn't want to find out. "Or," Loki continues, "we can move on."

"Move on where?"

"Once I'm satisfied."

"I said _where_."

"I know what you said." Loki sounds irritated. It's a bit gratifying. "And you'll find out, once you decide to do better."

\-----

"What do you mean _do better_?" Clint screams at the blank wall, later, when he wakes up in the box again and has spent more time alone. "I'll fucking show you better. Fuck you. Come back. Let me out. _Let me out_!"

Beating his fists against the wall does nothing except hurt his hand, and Clint knows that sitting the hell down would be the better course of action, that Loki won't show up until he's run himself into the ground, but once he starts he can't stop, kicking and clawing at the wall and screaming, "Fuck you, you said I could come out. Fuck you," until his voice is nearly gone and his hands and knees and feet hurt. His head too, from rage and stress and maybe from thumping it into the wall in frustration a few times.

He slides down the wall, limp like something the Hulk's thrown, until he's on his knees and just panting, with his bowed head pressed to the smooth, perfect wall. 

"That's not _quite_ what I said," Loki tells him, entering from the other side this time. Or Clint thinks. He's not really sure which side is which anymore. He tilts his head just enough to look, and Loki smiles in what looks like pleased surprise.

"Oh. Good work, Hawkeye."

Clint snorts, but doesn't duck his head again, even though he leaves it resting against the wall. "You want me to look at you," he concludes. "You couldn't have let me know in a less psycho way?"

"I want more than that," Loki corrects. "I want your world to be this room."

"You said--"

"Not _literally_ ," he huffs, sounding exasperated. Clint can't imagine how Thor hadn't beaten him to death centuries ago, the obnoxious, patronizing shit. "This is just to get the point across." He smiles, gentle, and Clint keeps watching him. "And I can keep you here for as long as it takes."

"Fuck you."

"You're a brute," Loki tells him, crouching till he's sitting on his haunches, elbows on knees, leaning over Clint. "But we'll fix that."

Clint swallows and stubbornly turns his face away.

"Have it your way," Loki sighs. "Maybe next time."

\-----

Loki lets him stew. With no day and no night and nothing. Twice, Clint falls asleep and thinks he's in some dark, even emptier place, and jerks awake, half expecting to find himself in his own bed, only to open his eyes to flat, smooth white. 

He tosses a shoe half-heartedly at the wall a couple of times, then quits and puts it and his sweatshirt back on. Sits hunched in it for a bit. Or for a while, unmoving and just looking down at his hands until Loki comes back, and then he raises his head.

"Good," Loki tells him, and then repeats it when Clint tracks him and even shifts to keep him in sight. "Don't forget. Because if you do, I'll have to reteach the lesson and the point of this was to break up the monotony. Of my incarceration."

He'd mentioned that. "Is this payback?"

Loki laughs. A condescending chuckle, like Clint's surprising and amusing, but in a way that's a bit distasteful. "Payback?" Loki echoes. "How petty."


	3. Chapter 3

"We've got work to do," Steve reminds him, when he finds Clint still up at around two in the morning, watching the news and a football game rebroadcast on split screen in the common room. "Tomorrow morning." He emphasizes the word _morning_. Clint's pretty sure what he means to emphasize is the way Clint's been kind of a slug lately, through practice and around the tower even though he makes sure that he's pulling his weight when it matters.

Clint grunts in response. If he lets his eyes drift half-closed the newscaster becomes a blur, only her lipstick standing out. A bright smudge through his lashes, changing shape as she speaks. Explosion, something something apprehended. He can't really make it out with the football crowd going nuts over something he'd missed.

"Maybe you should get some sleep?" Steve suggests, from somewhere behind him. "Are you even watching either of those?"

Not really. "Sure."

"Clint--"

"Steve." 

Steve hesitates. Not sure how to handle Clint's more contained foul mood. Maybe he should help Cap out and make like Tony. Give Steve something to be pissed about, and himself a good fight, to clear his head. Get the blood moving, after all the sitting around he's been--dreaming. All the laying around while he sleeps. Clint snort at the thought, but Steve catches it and misunderstands.

"Have it your way," he says, and Clint twitches, just a little. His hand tightening briefly on the TV remote. "But I don't want to hear about it tomorrow."

"You'll hear from Tony anyway. Consider him my ambassador."

Unexpectedly, Steve laughs and makes a noise of agreement, then comes over and sits, in an armchair set at an angle to Clint's couch. Getting a look at him, Clint thinks, and gives Steve a look back, making eye-contact and holding it until Steve breaks and looks away.

"What's the verdict, Doc?" Clint asks, turning back to the TV, where men are talking on both sides of the split screen now. Touchdown something police on the scene good play apprehended. 

"How do you follow any of that?" Steve asks, nodding at the screen. Changing the subject.

"It's a skill invented in the nineties," Clint tells him, even though he's really not trying to listen at all, letting everything blend together into noise and garble, which is kind of the point at the moment.

"Ah. I haven't caught up that far." Steve watches as the football side goes to panning the crowd, and then the news side to helicopter footage of a street full of people. Some kind of protest. Then he shakes his head and adds, "Under certain conditions, I could see the appeal."

That's a being drunk joke. Maybe a being high joke. It takes Clint off guard enough that he laughs, and once he's done that it's hard to hang on to his mood. His laugh fades quickly, to a low chuckle, but he relaxes into the cushions and heaves a sigh. Glances over at Steve and finds him smiling, small and like he's trying to suppress it, but he's clearly pleased with himself and the success of his comment. With having cracked Clint's pissy shell.

"Are you okay?" he asks, when he's sure Clint's guard is going to stay down. There's no ironic twist to his expression. Just genuine concern. Normally, Clint would bristle at it, but it's sort of nice to not have to dig through layers to figure out what's going on.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, just--" he waves a hand, still holding the remote. "Haven't been sleeping that great."

Steve meets that with silence, giving him another once-over, then, after a bit, offers, "We can probably do without you. Tomorrow."

Clint _hah_ -s.

"Hey, I've been up some nights myself."

"I thought you didn't need to sleep."

"I need _some_ sleep," Steve tells him. "Give me one too many nights without enough shuteye and--" He trails off and shrugs. "I'd rather you skip a day or two and come back on top of your game, than--" he raises a hand to indicate Clint, in general. "I'm not sure there's much use putting you in a training session, now that I've had a look at you."

That's Steve trying to talk him into taking the break. Clint appreciates the effort, but he's sure he's already benched, whether or not he agrees. Steve's face has that look to it. The stubborn one that means he's made his decision and intends to stick to it.

"You'll hear from Tony," Clint tells him, even though he's happy for the reprieve. He's sure Steve can see the relief in his face. "If you let me off the hook."

Steve shrugs and makes a noncommittal sound, and starts to get to his feet. "I hear from Tony anyway," he says, and claps Clint on the shoulder as he passes. "Just get some rest, Hawkeye."

\-----

He falls asleep where he is, on the couch with the TV on for white noise, for the odd intelligible sentence that breaks through the overlapping garble now and again, and Steve must have warned the team, because no one wakes him up, though someone does throw a blanket over him at some point. 

Clint wakes up somewhere around noon fighting with it, tangled in some physically impossible dark empty space that's nothing and restraining at the same time, but when he surfaces the rest of the way, and blinks to awareness, he's just in the common room, with the TV still on and still playing two different channels. Weather on one side and what looks like a soap opera on the other. Someone's turned the light off for him, and darkened the windows, so the room is murky, but not really dark. 

It takes Clint a second to realize that he's woken from blissful nothing. Maybe there'd been a bit where he was looking out the open door of the quinjet at a crowd below, but nothing else. Just a restful, blank stretch, before the thing with the blanket, and maybe that's what his subconscious had meant by _more empty_. Maybe he'd broken the recurring dream code, somehow. There's probably some kind of symbolism at play, that Clint's not up enough on New Age kookery to work out on his own.

Or maybe he'd be better off not poking that bear, now that he seems to be past it. It's such a relief that the only thing Clint can think to do is go back to sleep and enjoy it, but when the team gets back, he's still sitting in the same spot, with his knees bent and his head resting against his arms.

"Clint?" That's Natasha. Clint unfolds a hand enough to wave, and it's enough to let her know he's okay, because she makes an exasperated noise right after, worried for nothing.

"Sorry," he says. "Just a bit fuzzy."

"Aw," Tony says. "You must have had a hard time. I can see why you're worn out." It's mock-sympathetic, but it's also mock-mock-sympathetic. The Tony Stark double bullshit maneuver, circling back to eat its own tail, to make his genuine concern sound like a dig. Clint knows him well enough by now to know that the best tactic is to ignore his comments altogether and change the subject when possible.

"How was shooting things with SHIELD?" he asks, scrubbing a hand over his face and then through his hair. Unsuccessfully, judging by the way Natasha snorts, then comes over to perch on the back of the couch, at an angle to Clint and with her weight on just half a buttcheek. Looking down at him for a second in a way that reminds him of Steve's scrutiny the night before, considering and a little concerned before she gently nudges his head up and puts her fingers in his hair, making plucking motions and frowning. Then she lifts her hands again, throwing them up a little and lets them drop.

"It's hopeless," she announces.

"Yeah. Thanks," Clint grouches, as Tony laughs.

"It'll take a professional."

"Haha."

Natasha keeps smiling down at him. He must look _really_ stupid, for her to look so entertained. Clint tries to scrub at his hair some more, but it just makes Natasha laugh again. Then she says, "Shooting things at SHIELD was fine. We didn't need you after all."

"So don't feel too guilty about your vacation," Tony adds, calling from somewhere towards the kitchen. 

"Tony had to run tactics. And think about people other than himself."

"It wasn't that hard. I could manage, with enough practice."

Clint doesn't laugh, but he does relax, leaning into the backrest and toward Natasha. She takes it as a cue to mess with his hair again, this time making a more genuine effort to impose some order. "Where's Steve?" he asks, letting his voice go muzzy again, drifting a little.

"Making excuses for you," Natasha tells him, but fondly.

"Walking that line between _serious_ and _not too serious_ ," Tony says, from closer by. "I call it 'the flu zone'. Bad enough to get out of board meetings, not bad enough that anyone's gonna come check your pulse."

"I think Pepper calls that the hangover zone," Clint tells him, without opening his eyes. "Maybe the I'd-rather-not-know zone."

"Whatever works." Clint can hear the shrug in it. Tony's voice gets a bit more distant as he moves away again. "You eat anything yet? I have a mighty hunger, as some of us would say."

\-----

Clint sleeps pretty well through his Steve-mandated, SHIELD-unquestioned vacation. Mostly in his own bed and mostly he falls into a welcoming blank space, though one night he's sure there's something trippy about fish that he blames on either Bruce, Phil, or a combination of them and their ideas of what a day off should look like. The similarity is shocking. Or shockingly _un_ shocking. Clint thinks about it for a while, trying to drag out the cozy boneless feeling of awake-but-near-sleep, and decides that no, it makes sense. They'd get on, the two of them, bobbing around in some boat and keeping quiet on comms.

It's a funny thought, but kind of peaceful too, and Clint smiles into his blankets a bit, picturing the scene. Mentally outfitting both of them in stupid looking hats, absently aware of being half-asleep, drifting in and out a bit, and slowly working his way to full consciousness.

"You're an enabler, is what it is," he tells Steve, in the kitchen, watching Thor work his way through a week's worth of breakfast. "When I stop dragging myself out of bed at all, it'll be because you let me get lazy."

Steve smiles a little in the way that means he's amused but doesn't have a great response ready. "You look better," he decides instead, not responding to the accusation at all.

Clint shrugs and steals a piece of toast from Thor. Chews it dry, just to offset the sour-bitter of his too-strong coffee. Natasha, he thinks. Natasha never gets it right. "There wasn't anything wrong with me," he says, around his mouthful of dry bread.

"Mm-hm."

"Not _really_ ," Clint insists. "Really, Steve. Go any softer on this team--"

Steve raises his eyebrows but doesn't answer, and Clint lets it trail off with a grin, aware that Thor's watching the exchange with mild interest. Still more engaged in stuffing his face, but wanting to see if the challenge goes anywhere interesting. 

"Well, if you insist," Steve says, still calm and still looking amused. Like he's really enjoying Clint's bravado but also wouldn't mind to test it. "I expect you to be ready for a good work out tomorrow. First thing."

"First thing," Clint agrees. "Don't think I won't be there."

"You'd better be there, Hawkeye."

"And be warned; I'm pretty well rested."

Steve lifts his glass of juice in acknowledgement, and Clint lets up and turns his attention to getting to the bottom of his cup of terrible coffee and watching Thor pack breakfast sausages away. It's a pretty good morning, followed by a pretty good day, lazy, with a bit of light workout towards the end and nothing more dramatic than putting Tony on his ass a couple of times while he yells about boxing regulations. 

By the end of it, Clint's shaken off his mild downtime rust, and is mostly looking forward to whatever Steve's planning to spring on the team, so it's extra infuriating when he wakes up in Loki's box again.


	4. Chapter 4

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Clint demands, aiming it at the middle of the ceiling, like he's talking to JARVIS, even if the idea of Loki watching from above is a little unsettling. Like he's got Clint in a terrarium or something. 

The comparison feels unpleasantly accurate, and Clint's resigned to another long, torturous wait, but this time Loki shows up after only a few minutes, opening and closing a section of wall again, exactly like he's stepping into an interrogation room and with the same quiet intent Clint remembers from SHIELD. Implicit, dignified threat. Sitwell's great at it, when he wants to be, and Natasha a fucking natural. Coulson always looks like he's aware of the act, always looks like he's laughing to himself about it. Loki mostly looks full of himself. Not business like at all. Not SHIELD like, but like assholes Clint's run into a few times on the wrong end of a fuck-up, who were more interested in the beating and the burning than in answers.

"I thought you were letting me out," he says, as soon as the wall is a smooth, unmarked surface again.

"I didn't say that. I said we could move on." Loki smiles and gestures at him, an absent little wave. He's not wearing the dumb fingerless gloves this time, but full leather ones with some kind of gold pattern stamped into them at the cuff. "But it's nice to see you remember our conversations." 

Clint snorts, but finding out what Loki's game is seems more productive than shows of defiance that will just buy him another heel chilling session, like Loki thinks he's a child who needs time outs to think about his disobedience. "Yeah, well. You might want to consider redecorating. This minimalist thing is great and all, but maybe a window would be nice. The view I've got is getting old."

It doesn't get a rise out of Loki. His calm is infuriating, and giving him what he wants makes Clint feel hot with anger. Pissed at himself as much as at Loki, and he has to remind himself, _calm down and think, Hawkeye, be smart_ , in a way that's a mash-up of Coulson and Steve.

Loki lets him get a handle on his temper, waiting to say, "See? I knew we'd come to an understanding," until he's sure Clint's not going to attack, but just stand there stewing.

"What do you want?"

"Lots of things. Let's start with you."

That hadn't gone so well last time, Clint thinks, but keeps the comment to himself in the name of _be smart_ , but also for the sake of the more Natasha-like, _get out, regroup, and then you can kill him_. He lifts a hand and drops it, indicating the white walls and the fact that Loki's pretty much got him, as far as he can tell.

"Yes, well," Loki says, and pulls a chair out. Of nowhere. It doesn't even appear, it's just suddenly there as if it had always been, and Loki's just pulled to adjust it to a better position. The appearance is probably supposed to impress him, maybe disconcert him, but Clint ignores it and keeps his expression bland and disinterested as Loki settles himself, fussily straightening his clothing. "Have a seat," he invites, when he finishes to find Clint still watching impassively. He sounds surprised. Mildly incredulous in a way that makes Clint really want to sock him a good one, right in the side of his head.

"Funny," he says.

"There's more than enough space," Loki tells him, without any indication of what he means, but Clint's not an idiot. He's got a pretty clear idea.

"Fat chance, you pathetic egomaniac."

"Stand, then," Loki tells him. "It's your choice." He strips his gloves off. Rubs his fingers together like he's wiping them off, like his hands are over-warm and that's a bigger concern than anything Clint might say or do. "I can wait," he adds, without looking up. "You'll get tired eventually."

Defiance for the sake of it is stupid, Clint reminds himself, but stays where he is, his jaw set stubbornly.

"Or," Loki goes on, "I can make this box much smaller, and keep you exactly how I want you, until you learn. How did you like your stay when you could move freely, Hawkeye?"

"You're out of your mind," Clint snaps. Loki would do it. He's sure of it. Loki might make empty threats to yank Thor's chain, but he's not likely to have that consideration with Clint, or the same kind of motivation, to be satisfied by just messing with him.

"Tell me when you've decided," Loki says, busy tucking his gloves away. "But hurry up. If I wanted to sit around doing nothing, I wouldn't have bothered."

Clint's decided. They both know he's decided. There's no way any sane person would choose--whatever Loki's getting at. Being shut into a silent, tiny box, being restrained for long, solitary hours or days. He stays still anyway, frozen, chest tight with rage that he's not doing a great job of holding back anymore. His poker face has devolved into glaring and grinding his teeth, and he's sure Loki's enjoying every damn second of it.

"My patience can run out, Hawkeye."

"Fuck you." It's stupid. Whatever Loki's after, there's no point baiting punishment and letting Loki break him down before he even knows what this is about. No point in getting the fight kicked out of him before he can figure out what the fight _is_. It's just luck that Loki doesn't take the spat insult as Clint declaring his choice.

Luck, or because he already knows he's won, Clint thinks, with disgusted rage. He's never hated anyone as much as he hates Loki, and his cool, patient smile. Never been as fucking pissed as he is at himself as he settles to the floor, keeping his eyes on Loki more to avoid submissive gestures than to be obedient to the fucking _watch me_ order, then sits there on the floor he'd spent days lying on anyway, so angry he could bust. So furious he's almost shaking with it.

Calm down, he thinks to himself in the Coulson-Steve voice. It's not a big deal. It's just sitting on a floor, and he's done that before. He still feels his temples start to pound when Loki tells him, "Good choice, Hawkeye. Very smart," indifferent to the fact that Clint doesn't answer.

"But maybe not so casual, hm?"

He's being baited. Clint's sure of it. Goaded into doing something dumb that will give Loki an excuse to do something to him, and probably something whacked and unpleasant. "Maybe you could be more specific," Clint grits out. "If you want me to do something."

Loki considers, then concludes, "You did like having orders."

It's exactly the kind of game he should expect Loki to play. He'd started with it when he'd first barged in on Paintball City, reminding Clint about the last time he'd been at Loki's mercy, and Clint's pretty sure he's not going to let up with it any time soon. That he's going to keep pushing on that fracture until it gives way, if Clint lets him. Until he can wriggle deep under Clint's skin, like larvae, to eat him from the inside.

Loki leans towards him, elbows on knees and hands dangling. Clint would love to punch him in in his sly, gloating face, but he's being smart and doesn't. "Get," Loki says, enunciating carefully like he thinks Clint's a little on the slow side, "on your knees."

"Like hell," Clint snaps, even though Loki's holding all the chips. Even though the threat of being locked into a tiny, tiny room makes his stomach roil.

"I don't think you understand whose dream this is," Loki tells him. "It might be playing in your head, but it belongs to me, because _you_ belong to me." 

Natasha'd gotten rid of him. Natasha had knocked him loose and set Clint free and medical and psych and some unnamed, mystery division of SHIELD, and months of running around as an Avenger and acting on his own cognizance had confirmed it. 

"You think a little tap is all it takes? It's a bit of trouble without the staff, and with you awake, but I'm still here, Hawkeye. As you can see. Now get on your knees."

His body doesn't exactly move without him, and it's not like the staff's influence either. His will isn't overridden and he doesn't forget the deep, angry loathing he has for Loki, but his motivations are vague and hazy. Not really his own, with things just happening for dream reasons and driven by dream logic. There's no force or pressure to struggle against. Clint just sort of does it, arranging himself the way Loki wants, a spectator to it like watching any dream unfold.

"Now crawl to me."

He resists that, a little, just enough to make his movements hesitant, and probably because Loki lets him. Giving him time to think about being helpless and vulnerable and about the uneasy prickle at the back of his neck, exposed by his bowed head and an easy target. 

Loki settles a hand there when Clint comes to a stop in front of him, rubbing gently and with small motions, like soothing a pet. Then he gets a grip on Clint's hair and pulls, forcing his head up and back to make eye contact. "You won't fight." It's not an order, just information, and Clint knows it's true, because he doesn't even have a hand up to try to fight Loki off. Just sits there on his knees with his hands by his sides, and his throat exposed. "Say 'yes'."

"Yes."

"Good. Say--" Loki stops. Frowns. Says, "You know what? I don't think you should be allowed to address me. When I ask, you answer. Say my name, or replace it with any title, and you'll be punished for insolence."

"Fuck you," Clint says, because for some reason he can. Loki slaps him, then backhands him in the other direction, easy and with no heat. The cool detachment, more than anything, makes Clint feel like a toy. Something for Loki to play with and nothing more, allowed just enough freedom to be amusing.

"Say 'yes'," Loki coaches, and slaps Clint again before he can.

"Yes."

"Good. We understand each other."

The grip on Clint's hair releases, replaced with gentle stroking. Loki smoothes his hair as if in apology, smiling and pleased, before taking Clint's face in both hands and tilting his head back again, this time to examine his split and already swelling lip, and to make an annoyed _tch_ noise at it, like he hadn't done it to Clint himself.

"Say 'Loki'."

It's not even a trap. It's walking him right into the fire, with no choice or options. Clint takes a breath and then another, too fast. Giving too much away. "Say it," Loki insists, breathing it low and mock seductively. Clint hates his guts. Hates him so hard his head and chest hurt from it.

"Loki."

Loki's hands slide from his face, fingers trailing delicately until he has them wrapped around Clint's throat. _You told me to_ , Clint thinks, a moment before that grip tightens, slowly cutting off his air, until he's desperate and wheezing, mouth opening and closing like a landed fish, but not fighting.

"I know, it's so unfair," Loki murmurs, like he really is in Clint's head. "But I don't want you to forget, you've been learning so many things." 

Clint's air is gone, throat closed all the way off, and spots dancing in front of his eyes. He's starting to slump against Loki’s hands, when all of a sudden the pressure is gone, and he can breathe again, air flooding his lungs in a rush, making him cough and choke and bringing tears to his eyes. The air in the box is cool, and he's trying to suck it in so fast that it burns in his throat and chest and makes him hack some more, and then it’s gone again.

This time Clint does fight, thrashing and pulling at Loki's wrists and kicking against the floor, until he's pulled close and pressed to the inside of Loki's leg, pinned more than supported, with the chair in the way to further limit his movements. If he wasn't so desperate to pry Loki's fingers from around his neck he'd sock him in the nuts.

Loki holds him till his struggles weaken to spasmodic jerks, then slowly releases, letting him get a bit more air, and then a bit more, while his vision dances and darkens and spots float by, and then Loki leans over and kisses him on the mouth, while Clint's still limp and his struggles bonelessly uncoordinated.

And then whatever control is in action stops, and he's scrambling back and away, on his ass and with his feet skittering on the smooth floor, too panicked to get any real purchase. He stops when his head and shoulders thump into the wall, and then there's nothing he can do but pant and stare round-eyed at Loki, wiping frantically at his mouth with the back of one arm. "What did you do to me? What did you do? Let me go."

"I don't really _have_ you," Loki points out, infuriatingly calm, and a bit like Clint's inability to catch on is trying his patience. "I'm...home. We're just, as they say, _connected_."

"Let me go."

"Or did you mean the kiss? I thought you'd be familiar with the gesture."

"Let me--"

"Yeah, yeah. Let you go. How about this?" Loki offers, reaching to him, in an imperiously summoning motion. "Come thank me and we'll be done."

Clint stays where he is, eyeing the outstretched hand with suspicion. "Thank you how?"

Loki turns his hand over, palm up and tilted towards Clint. "Put your mouth to my hand. Like a hunter with the huntmaster." 

Clint narrows his eyes.

"I can wait until you're ready."


	5. Chapter 5

"What's a huntmaster?" Clint asks, when they've wrapped up Steve's training challenge, with finesse if not the energy and enthusiasm Clint had promised. Steve still gives him a congratulatory thump or two on the back, while Tony tries to decide if he wants to haul them all off to burritos or burgers, talking to himself or JARVIS while he weighs the options.

" I just thought I remembered something," Clint says, when Thor gives him a weird look instead of answering. "It's nothing. Nevermind."

"He names the quarry," Thor says, lifting a hand in a gesture that's a lot like a shrug. "And who gets to join the hunt, where the course will run, the days that will be spent."

"It doesn't take a genius, Barton," Tony pipes up. "Take a break from making Thor state the obvious and tell me; are you're in the mood for fries or nachos?"

"Stop me if this sounds crazy," Clint goes on, ignoring Tony and hoping he'll turn his attention to Natasha or Bruce, "but would you ever, for any reason--"

"Yes?"

Clint makes a helpless gesture, holding both hands up and making a face, "I don't know. Kiss his hand or something."

"What did you remember?" Thor looks concerned, and great. That means Clint's subconscious has burnt through the obvious nightmare fuel and is digging into repressed details.

"I don't know. Just that. Something about hunters. It's not a big deal."

Thor frowns a little. Like something about it is maybe a bit of a big deal. Or possibly just an unpleasant sort of deal. "They're not of Asgard," he says, voice flat. "We have a hunt, of course."

"Of course."

"But we don't keep hunters like the wooded lands. We captured one once," Thor says, part boast, part something hilariously petulant. "But that was war, and we had to return it when father called truce."

Clint watches Steve exchange notes with someone he doesn't recognize in SHIELD uniform, tallying up virtual damages and making suggestions. "Like some kind of dog?" he asks, as Natasha joins the huddle, pointing at a rooftop and making circular gestures with her other hand. _Rotate position_ , Clint knows that means. Great. That means next time he's liable to be given a hand-to-hand-to-smash station. It's a good training idea, but he hates fucking _rotate position_.

"No," Thor says. "Maybe a sort of sprite? I don't know for sure, but they're a little crazy in a similar way."

"Right," Clint says. "Great. That makes a lot of sense."

"Their master summons them with a golden horn," Thor goes on, as they head to join the others. "To run down stag. And centaurs, sometimes, they say, if their master wishes. They adore the chase no matter the game."

"That's totally some kind of dog," Clint says. "Some kind of fucking centaur murder dog."

"If you want to look at it that way," Thor allows, and holds a hand up to acknowledge Steve's greeting.

Clint lets the topic drop, stepping into the circle of agents and Avengers to narrow his eyes at Natasha and tell her, "Rotate position, my ass. Don't think I'm not on to you."

\-----

Oddly, Clint doesn't have any trouble sleeping. Unlike the last time he'd been preoccupied with Loki, and SHIELD had been occupied with assigning him things to read and people to talk to and sending him for all kinds of testing and scans, sometimes using tech Clint hadn't been familiar with and had known better than to ask about. It's a little weird how easily he drops off, even though the expectation of a freaky Loki dream has him keyed up starting sometime in the early evening and should be more than enough to keep him tossing and turning.

It's even more disconcerting to jerk awake hard in his shorts and imagining he can still feel the warmth of Loki's skin against his mouth, everything else a confusing dream-blur that comes into focus in starts, throughout the day, when Clint's thinking about something else and not expecting it. Blindsided by a sudden flash of Loki's fingers stroking his face, or the echo of him saying, "See? I remember what you like," like they were reunited--not lovers, but some creepy, gross version of something like that.

Clint wrinkles his nose and shudders at the thought. Scrubs a hand over his face, and doesn't get up, focusing on the warm off-white of his ceiling, brighter by the window, then falling away into shadow. Marred by light fixtures. No directionless, sourceless illumination here. Thank god Pepper hadn't let Tony outfit everything in glowing panels or invisible LEDs or something, because for a few seconds on waking, the normality is the only thing keeping Clint from freaking right the fuck out. As it is, he'd just like to climb out of his skin, and then maybe scrub what's left of him raw.

It's way too much heebie jeebie for morning wood, Clint thinks, but lies very still and maybe swallows hard a few times while he tries to not think about it, or move in a way that will make him aware of it. It's nothing. He's woken up hard from weirder, more nonsensical dreams, like the one about being stranded on an iceberg with Sitwell, and hadn't thought it meant anything other than that he should think about wrapping up his overdue paperwork, maybe, or get someone to turn down the office aircon. 

But then, the iceberg dream hadn't been a sex dream in any way, not even remotely, and the Loki dream was--screwed up. Just fucking screwed up, and he should probably take a cold shower to clear his head and wake up the rest of the way, and then he'd be fine.

Or able to think about other things, anyway. The 'fine' is a little debatable, considering he's back on Loki-replays, and in a way that he _definitely_ doesn't want to share with some patient, professionally understanding SHIELD headshrinker, so they can jot notes about it that will more than likely end up in his permanent, if confidential, medical file.

Loki's fingers had tasted faintly sweet, he remembers abruptly. Like he'd just handled fruit.

It's a detail that has no fucking place in anything that might end up in hard copy anywhere, and especially not with his name on the file. Even if it wasn't disgusting as hell, SHIELD would think he was cracking or a security risk. He might only have one Loki-shaped strike against him, but _mental highjack_ is a pretty big one, and wherever it is that security risks go to disappear, Clint's pretty sure he doesn't want to see it.

It takes forever to drag himself to his feet and to get it together to slouch into the bathroom, and then to get the water on and himself undressed, then perfunctorily soaped and rinsed, even though the water is icy and should be getting him moving. Should be shocking him to alertness.

Instead, it just makes him freeze, and he's still shivering a little when he makes it to the kitchen, to give the dregs in the coffee pot an experimental swirl, glad that for once no one is hanging around to ask questions.

\----- 

"Why are you doing this to me?" Clint demands, even though Natasha's halfway around a corner and he's mostly asking the question at her butt. "What did I ever do to you?"

"You're supposed to be taking the lead. I already traded," Natasha hisses back at him, probably not as annoyed as she sounds.

"Why do you have a gun? I want a gun."

"Why can't I have Stark?" Natasha asks, but into the comms.

"You can't all have me," Tony tells them, voice clear but digitized by the suit in that way that Clint is pretty sure is intentional and for effect. "You'll just have to learn to take turns."

"I want Hulk," Clint tells them. "It's not fair to team him up with Thor. They're going to pound us into sauce." He has Natasha's Widow's Bites around his wrists and they're terrible. No range on them at all. _Maybe_ he has a chance against Steve. He might be able to get a good zap in, against Steve. "This is stupid."

It's not. It makes sense. Clint's just not in any mood to be in a fighting position he's less than stellar in, using weapons that are the opposite of his strong suit, against opposition that either doesn't _have_ a non-strong suit, or can just smash its way through anyway. "Let's just take down Stark and call it a day," he tells Natasha, rounding the corner himself, to join her, then triggers one of the Bites for emphasis.

Natasha scoffs. "They'll expect us to go for Stark. He's just bait."

"So, see what Thor and Hulk do, then try to buy off whoever's left standing? Or is that not enough role rotation for you? I could try to show a little leg--"

That gets her to turn enough to shoot him an annoyed look. Clint grins. Fake, and fleeting. Harsher than he means it to look, and he knows it's enough to give away that he's not _really_ playing or getting on her case just to entertain himself, but it doesn't win him any sympathy. Natasha just clicks her tongue in annoyance and focuses harder on the job at hand, determined to win even if she has to drag Clint along with her.

"Could've been teamed with Stark," she grumbles, as Clint slips past her to re-take point. 

"Could've been." 

"He might not have his suit, but at least I'd have some peace."

Clint glances back at her. "Are we talking about the same Stark?"

Instead of answering, Natasha jerks her head at the alley in front of them. A clear _move_. Clint doesn't need more than that to know that the rest of the instruction is _find Cap, and get him where I can take him down from a distance_. It's their usual game, just turned around until they're on opposite sides of it. Familiar. Nothing he has to think about too hard. When Natasha drops back and then melts away into some shadow, moving to get out above him, it's almost comfortable. 

After that, the day is an extended game of tag that involves catching glimpses of Steve, losing Steve, and evading Thor and Hulk in the hope that they clash with Steve first and thin the field.

It might be a sign of his distraction that Clint doesn't even realize he's being lured, led across the practice ground to where the buildings are taller and the alleys narrower, except Natasha doesn't catch it either, until Tony makes his move and she realizes the tight angles are as good as a shield when it's not Clint doing the shooting. In their usual positions, it would have been fine.

"Hah," Tony says, monologuing like a villain, "I _knew_ you'd do this. I knew you'd fall back on your SHIELD twin tactics." He doesn't have Clint trapped, but he has to know that Clint's not about to beat a retreat, either. Not in the face of their fuck up and Tony's smug crowing. It's not the smart move, but _fuck_ the smart move.

"Sorry that your easy shot isn't the Widow's easy shot, Barton," Tony tells him, wiggling his fingers. Powering up.

"You have gauntlets. Why do you have gauntlets, you cheater?"

Tony pauses long enough to look offended. "There's no rule about _having_ suit parts. Just about _starting_ with suit parts. I'm allowed to _make_ stuff."

"You're supposed to--" Clint's too pissed to finish. Intensely, unreasonably pissed. Suddenly really invested in the rules and in all the players sticking to them, and fucking incensed at the weaseling, even if a small voice at the back of his mind notes that, yeah, it might be fair for Tony to concoct something. He's just supposed to adapt, not ignore his own resources.

The Widow's Bites snap, spitting electricity, but they're still close range weapons, and Tony's ready for his lunge, blasting before Clint can close the distance, and dropping him hard to the concrete.

"Not bad for bait, huh?" Tony crows. "Bet you thought it was gonna be two against Steve. Think I can't play--Clint?"

He's not hurt. They're not aiming to hurt. That's not the game. It's just Tony he's looking up at, just Tony standing over him, and he's still got the Widow's Bites charged and ready to go, if Tony gets in range or tries to touch him or fuck. _Fuck_.

"Clint?" Tony repeats. "You okay?"

"Shit."

"What happened, buddy? You zap yourself? I didn't hit you _that_ hard."

"Shit," Clint repeats, and then says, "Shit," again, to keep from blurting anything about Loki, or the vague dream memory that had solidified, overlapping reality for just a second and blending Tony and Loki and the ghosts of old flashbacks psych had warned him might come back, under the right kinds of stress. 

"Okay," Tony says, not to Clint. "But I'm calling time out. If you're trying to set up an opportunity to sucker punch me, Barton, that's dirty play." 

Clint laughs. Just a half-hearted "Huh," sound as Tony gets down to one knee to check on him, hands already on Clint's wrist, undoing the Bites and shutting them off. "It's time out," he reminds Tony, as the weapons slide away. They disappear neatly into Tony's back pocket. Rolled deceptively small, considering the damage Clint's seen them do.

"You're already dead," Tony points out, light, but his hand is on Clint's shoulder. Like he thinks the contact might help him figure out what just happened, or like he thinks Clint might tip over. It's friendly, but Clint still twitches out from under the repulsor in Tony's palm, wincing at giving that much away, then wincing at that slip too.

"Stop twitching," Tony tells him. "You're freaking me out. I could swear I had these calibrated---"

Clint laughs again, harsh, and rubs at his face with the back of a hand, half-glad to be free of the Bites, even if it means Tony's armed while he's not. It's a stupid thing to get tense about, but he can tell Tony senses it, because he lets Clint go and sits back on his heels to make distance, fussing with his jerry-rigged gauntlets, and then Natasha is there, dropping from somewhere above and behind Clint. 

"Damn it," she says, and Clint's not sure if she means her lack of shot options, being outsmarted by Tony, or Clint short circuiting in response to practically nothing.

"Fucking rotate position," Clint says, to cover. It comes out harsher than he means, but it's good enough, because after that Tony gets distracted by Steve's arrival, and Natasha starts to report the screw up of Clint forgetting that his easy shot isn't a universal easy shot, making Steve grin even as Clint lets Tony haul him back to his feet.

"Maybe we should try having you run the team for a few rounds," Steve says, joking, while Clint dusts himself off to avoid eye-contact and scrutiny. "You might have to learn to lower your expectations."

"Yeah. You mere mortals have got it tough," Clint says, but grins back and claims a gun from Natasha. "Let me run it from up top though, and you've got yourself a deal."


	6. Chapter 6

"You don't have to make it so hard on yourself," is Loki's advice, even though Clint hadn't asked or told him anything. "This could be easy, if that's what you wanted. It's your choice."

"Easy how?" Clint asks, because even though he's forbidden from addressing Loki with any term, back talk--even querulous backtalk--seems permissible. For reasons Clint's not clear on and doesn't want to be. Probably, it's another way to mess with him. Giving him enough freedom to forget himself and slip up.

"Oh, come on." Loki sighs. His exasperation reminds Clint of Tony. Impatient and frustrated, with an undertone of disbelief. "It's not that difficult, Hawkeye. Do as you're asked--"

Clint snorts.

"And everything can just--" Loki brings his hands together, stopping with his palms a few inches apart. "Condense."

"Right."

"Dream time's like that." He sounds bored. Like he's trying to reason with a child, but isn't holding out much hope that Clint will achieve comprehension. Like he's only bothering to explain out of duty or as a whacknut formality. "Sometimes you fall for days, and sometimes you blink and it's hours later, just like that."

"I'm blinking," Clint says. "And you're still here."

Loki smiles. Laughs, gently and in a politely amused way that makes Clint really, really wish he had his bow. Or any weapon, really. Anything to give him an edge, to tip trying an attack from _really stupid_ to _why not_ on the bad idea scale, but all he has is the same casual clothes he's been waking up in. Sneakers, jeans, t-shirt. Hooded sweater with a zipper, the plastic binding missing from one end of its drawstring, and frayed on the other. Chewed, from when Loki had left him to stare at blank walls all on his own for what had felt like days on end.

They're somewhere else now. Clint's not sure where, but they've gone from the empty, sterile box to a large room with a fire snapping away and heavy drapes over what Clint thinks must be windows or maybe tall doors. Leading to balconies, maybe, or some kind of walk, but definitely opening to the outside. There's a bright expanse of carpet, and seats with furs draped over them, but nothing about the skins looks rough or even rustic. They're lined and finished, the fabric richer than even anything Tony owns, and silky tassels hang from the ends. Where paws might have once, Clint thinks, a bit morbidly. Along the wall, on the other side of the room, is a long wood table, stacked with heaped dishes, like someone's set out a holiday meal, then abandoned it untouched. At the foot of the table, Loki slouches in a high backed chair, legs crossed at the knee and foot bouncing absently. He looks relaxed and almost happy as he watches Clint take in the room and cautiously wander the perimeter of the carpet.

"Come back," Loki says, finally, while Clint's pacing around near the far seating area, trying to work out how high up they are and if it's a fall he's likely to survive. If there's a reality out there at all. 

There's no light coming in around the curtains. If there is an outside, it's night there. Or dark, at least. Or this could just be a bigger, more furnished version of the box, existing nowhere, in any way that matters, and just as timeless. Or the curtains are thick, Clint thinks, and hanging over narrow windows. Or just providing insulation over solid doors. There's no reason yet to start building to short-breathed claustrophobia. No reason to start convincing himself that even his own skin is too tight a fit, not before he investigates more thoroughly. It's cooler over by the curtains. That means some kind of opening. Some kind of outside, and a way to get there. It's okay. 

He's so aware of Loki it's sickening. He's making casual, quiet noises. Lifting and putting down a goblet, playing with silverware. Not bothered at all by Clint's delayed obedience. He's humming softly, and the sound of it fills Clint's awareness like a beacon. Before the box and before he became so aware that Loki _meant_ to install himself at the forefront of his mind, to make himself the center of Clint's attention, he'd have called it reasonable fucking caution and maybe professional alertness. Now it feels uncomfortably like Loki's succeeding. Not just at making Clint do what he wants, but at making Clint _think_ what he wants. The awareness of his awareness makes his stomach clench and turn over, and makes the awareness even sharper.

It's a deadly cycle, Clint thinks, dry, disgusted, and makes himself take a breath, count, let it out, and repeat, like Bruce trying to contain the Hulk. Loki's cup clunks softly against the wooden tabletop.

Clint takes and releases another breath. Concentrates on the feeling of his ribs expanding then contracting on the exhale. The soft knit of his clothing is warm enough, with the fire filling the room with heat and an unfamiliar woody scent--like pine, but not--but Clint wishes for his armor. For the comforting press of his protective vest.

"I said, come back," Loki repeats, when he's let Clint pace from one end of the wall to the other, twice, and mostly to calm himself down. Doing shit all for recon.

Loki could make him. Loki could have it just happen, have Clint just do it, no force required. That's the joke here. That's the choice--the easy way or the hard way. Clint swallows and turns partway. Considers the distance between them and the expanse of the carpet, broad enough that the pattern blends together with distance. It's thick, and soft and as luxurious as the draped furs, but Clint would still rather walk it than crawl it.

"You're hilarious," he tells Loki. 

Loki smiles, and tips his goblet in acknowledgement. An easy little salute, with his elbow propped on the edge of the table. "You always were clever," he says, and absently swirls his drink. The cup is some kind of metal. Shiny, and worked, but not gold. Clint can't tell what he's drinking. "You have until the bottom of this cup to choose."

It's a Tony style measure of time--you have till the end of this scotch, Cap--but fucked up. Clint half expects Loki to knock the rest of his drink back the way Tony would, but he just takes another measured sip, smirking against the brim as Clint decidedly doesn't try to figure out how much liquid is left. They've been there a while, and the cup doesn't look like it's sitting heavy in Loki's hand, but everything with Loki is lies and illusion and head games. It's hard to tell what he wants. If he'd prefer for Clint to push his luck and screw himself, or play safe and obey. 

Either one, probably. _Probably_ , he just wants to watch Clint squirm. Clint's not about to give him the satisfaction.

Crossing the room feels exposed, like crossing a no-man's land, the ceiling dark above him and all the walls far away. Clint squares his shoulders and doesn't let it show on his face, keeping his pace at a grudging stalk and ignoring the way his chest tightens the closer he gets to Loki, who takes another sip as Clint comes to halt in front him, like the edge of the carpet is a barrier.

"A bit more," Loki tells him, and gestures with his dangling foot. Indicating a spot close by his chair.

_Fat chance_ , Clint would like to say, but there's no way he can make good on the rebellion, so instead he takes two deliberate steps off the carpet, and then another, standing close enough to Loki that his leg is almost touching the chair. 

Loki lets him stand for a while, then gestures again. With his head this time, nodding slightly down at the floor. Clint swallows. The tight feeling in his chest is making it hard to breathe, but he's not sure if it's repressed panic or just simple loathing. 

"Tell me 'no'," Loki suggests, amused. Daring him. Clint half expects something to make him do it, for the word to just fall out of his mouth, but nothing happens.

"You psycho," he says instead. Loki smiles, unbothered. Holding all the chips, but letting him choose. It's worse than being under the staff. 

" _No_ ," Loki prompts, and smiles. Like it's a friendly joke between them. Like he's just teasing, looking up at Clint without concern. If he was anyone else, he'd be the one at a sore disadvantage, considering their respective positions, but he's got Clint good and cornered. Even with the size of the room, he's right where Loki wants him, right where Loki's ordered him to be. "Say it, Hawkeye."

Clint sets his teeth, blanking his expression, and folds. Not giving Loki the resistance he wants. Refusing to play. Loki makes a pleased sound anyway.

"Oh," he says, like he's surprised. "Good choice."

"Fuck you," Clint growls, low and aiming it toward one carved foot of the chair. Looking hard at it instead of at Loki or the room or anything else. Glaring at a twisting form that could be a claw, could be a tree root. Loki's hand settling in his hair makes him tense, but it's just a second before Clint stifles the response.

"Here," Loki says, nudging him under the chin, making him lift his head, then keeping it in place with a knuckle pressed into the soft tissue under Clint's jaw. He can probably feel Clint's breath accelerating. The way he has to swallow against the threat to his airway. "Drink."

The goblet's still half full, Clint notes. He could have dragged things out a bit more. Taken a few more minutes to _not_ be sitting at Loki's feet. He wonders if that's the point. If Loki's rubbing his surrender in, or trying to reward the obedience. Whatever's in the cup is strong. Not wine or beer or anything Clint recognizes, but something sweet and light that he can tell would make his head swim if he had more than the few swallows that Loki tips into his mouth.

"Asgardian mead," Loki tells him, taking another sip himself. "Brewed from light." He smirks, sardonic in a way Clint might enjoy, on anyone else. "They say. And this--" He sets the cup down to pick at something on the table, then holds up a piece of something that looks like meat, dark and with a rich savory smell when Loki brings it closer. "Is boar, I think. Raised wild in some forest backwater, for Odin's court."

It's good. Roasted soft the way Tony's barbeque attempts never work out, and running with juice that fills Clint's mouth. _Don't eat the food_ , he thinks, ridiculously. Maybe a bit hysterically. _If you want to go home, don't eat the food_.

There's no choice about it. Clint's not stupid enough to think that there is, even though his whole body feels hot with indignation every time he has to take something gingerly from Loki's fingers, pulling his lips back to avoid contact. Feeling disgusted when Loki wipes fruit juice off his mouth with the back of one finger, then pushes in past his lips.

He's had Loki's fingers in his mouth before. Clint's sure of it, even though he can't pull up a clear memory. It's like he's dreamed it, except the drag of Loki's fingertip over his tongue and the press on his lip is too familiar, and that, finally, gets a distressed sound out of him. Just a low, strangled noise he swallows back before it can get any louder. As soon as Loki withdraws, he snaps his jaw shut, gritting his teeth until they hurt.

"You don't like the fare," Loki asks, sounding curious, "of the high table of Asgard? You should see Thor pack it away." He smiles across the table, considering the collection of dishes, then half-rises to reach, and comes back with something covered in golden crust that he feeds to Clint in small pieces, from flaky dough to steaming filling. It's hot enough that it burns Clint's tongue, but Loki doesn't seem bothered, gathering the thick syrup on his fingers and holding them out for Clint to lick clean.

He follows that with small, cold berries that he holds pinched delicately between thumb and index finger to set one at a time on Clint's tongue, making him open his mouth and wait for each one like a trained dog.

The thought makes the tight feeling in his chest unspool into humiliated rage. He's not sure if Loki doesn't notice or if he means to push Clint's buttons, but the next time his fingers are between Clint's teeth, Clint snaps them shut.

The whole thing lasts maybe three seconds. Red washes through Clint's vision, and his ears ring. For a second he's sure he's just that angry, that it's fury and adrenaline, but when his sight clears, he's got a worm's eye view of the carpet and his cheek is pressed hard against the floor. 

"You were doing so well," Loki tells him. Clint tries to get up, but Loki's foot grinds against his head, keeping him down and in place.

"Fuck off." It comes out rough. Gritted out as he fumbles for leverage. His body feels clumsy and uncoordinated and he can't quite get his hands under him to push himself up with. He wonders if Loki's hit him in the head or something. The sense of disorientation, of everything being just a bit unsteady around him, is a little like that. His ears are still ringing a little.

The pressure against his skull eases. "Get up, Hawkeye."

"So you can knock me back down? I'll stay here, thanks."

Loki huffs in irritation. At least it's easy to get under his skin. It's petty satisfaction, but it's something. "What's on that rug anyway?" Clint asks. "Trees or something? It's nice."

" _A_ tree. _The_ tree, in fact. Get up."

Clint doesn't move. "The tree, huh?"

"It's Asgard nonsense."

"Yeah? So why is it here? If it's bullshit? This isn't a real place, right?"

"Get up."

He sounds impatient. Clint's not sure why discussing the decor is pissing Loki off, but it's fantastic. He gets up to one elbow to consider the carpet again, and its light-on-dark pattern of branches and roots. "You made this place, and you picked it." He pushes up, shifting back onto his knees. "And all Thor's favorite deserts."

There's no answer. Clint takes the opportunity to steady himself, taking slow, measured breaths and closing his eyes for a few seconds. Loki's definitely hit him. Now that the swimming feeling is going out of his head, he can tell there's a tightness over his cheek. A mix of numb and sore that means bruising and swelling. It's so mundane, it's almost comforting, and if Loki wasn't right there, Clint would give it an experimental poke. 

"Guess there's not a lot of cake where you are," he says instead, not acknowledging the ache that's starting to radiate down to his jaw and up to his temple. He half expects Loki to crack him in the head again, but there's nothing, and when Clint turns to glance carefully over his shoulder, Loki's just leaning back looking at him. After a few moments, he picks the goblet back up and holds it out, gesturing with the stem, but pulls it back when Clint moves to take it.

There's as much liquid in it as before, clear gold and sparkling as Clint glares into the cup. Even without looking, he can tell Loki's got a smirk on his face. Dismissing his insurrection and resetting to step one. "With your mouth, Hawkeye," Loki corrects, and strokes Clint's head with his free hand. Pushing his head back with firm pressure, so he's looking up, still half turned on his knees. At least until Loki pulls him back by his hair, yanking him into a sprawl, his back against Loki's legs and his head tipped back and held against Loki's knee. "Let me show you."

"Fuck. Fuck." _Stop_ bubbles up his throat, but Loki's not about to and Clint's not about to beg him. It's bad enough that he can't help struggling, kicking at the floor for traction on the polished stone and clawing at Loki's restraining hand, where it's moved to cup his throat and chin, thumb pressing against his jaw on one side and fingers on the other. The throb in his face feels like it's being pushed into his eye and down his neck, and when Loki rolls his thumb firmly against the swelling, Clint's mouth falls open in a gasp.

He's ready for Loki to pour the drink down his throat, to be drowned or choked with it, but it doesn't happen. Loki just feeds it to him bit by bit, small sip at a time, careful not to spill or overfill Clint's mouth, and except for the way his thumb keeps massaging Clint's injured face, shooting sparks through his vision with each stroke, he's gentle. It's awful. Clint would prefer to drown.

"Easy," Loki soothes, when Clint moans against the rim of the cup, teeth clicking on its rim. He hadn't meant to let the sound escape, but it slips out before he knows he's going to make it. His teeth are clicking on the metal, making a soft rattling noise. It takes Clint a moment to realize that he's shaking. That it's not Loki's hand that's trembling. "Shh."

The comforting sounds he's making are smug. Full of venom and satisfaction. Enjoying Clint's attempts to squirm free. His mouth fills again, and Clint swallows convulsively, then tries to push the brim out of his mouth with his tongue, so he can clench his teeth shut. The cup squeaks against a tooth but doesn't budge, and his mouth fills again.

Clint swallows. Kicks. His heel slides on the floor. He can hear himself making soft _huh huh_ noises, part pant, part moan, floating from the drink now instead of the knock to the head. His grip on Loki's arm is getting unsteady. His fingers feel clumsy, his body slower to obey.

"Ugh," Clint protests, trying to shake his head, to turn away from the next sip Loki tilts into his mouth. "'Ulk."

"Calling for the monster? How sweet." The cup tilts again, and Clint sputters, then coughs when Loki relents, fingers moving against his neck and face in mock comfort.

Clint tries shouting for help a few more times, choking and muffled into the cup, then gives up and deliberately lets go of Loki's arm, letting his hands drop to his sides, lowering them slowly until his fingers are braced against the floor, letting Loki cradle his head and swallowing obediently when he’s prompted. Letting his eyes slide shut.

"See how easy this can be?" Loki asks, finally letting up. Accepting the surrender, Clint thinks, but he can't make himself care when he's finally getting a break and a chance to breathe on his own time. "Hawkeye?"

"Yeah," Clint breathes, and swallows, just to clear his throat, this time. "Figured--" His voice catches. "Figured it out."

Loki pets him, fingers moving gently in Clint's hair. "Get back on your knees and we can try again."

Clint laughs, half breath and half sob, eyes fluttering back open. Smashed as hell. The floor tilts a bit as he straightens, with Loki's hand at his back to help, pressing between his shoulders, at the spot where Clint might shoot a man. "Ask me, Hawkeye. Say, 'Please let me try again'."

"Fuck." It's unsteady. All of him is. His arms feel wobbly when he tries to brace himself on them, pushing up to get his legs back under him. Before he can, Loki pulls him back, stopping him with just a sharp tug to the hood of his sweater, then holding him in place with it.

"Say it."

Clint doesn't, but he doesn't tell Loki to drop dead either. Loki gives him a shake.

"Fine," he pants. "Fine, I'll have more of that pie. If you insist." It's slurred. His head feels fuzzy and too-light. Like he's not getting enough oxygen. "Think you'd better cut me off from the bubbly, though."

"Well," Loki says, pulling him up easily while Clint kicks in futile protest, just the couple of times before he's released, to sit at Loki's feet again. "We can deal with the biting if you'd rather skip straight to that instead."

"It was an accident."

"Oh? Then I'll accept an apology."

"Sorry," Clint tells him, not managing to keep the sarcasm out of it. He's not making that much of an effort to, really.

"I'll need a demonstration that it won't happen again."

Clint doesn't ask what kind of demonstration, but it becomes clear pretty quickly, when one of Loki's hands settles on the back of his neck, and the other lifts a bit of fruit from the table and brings it to Clint's mouth, pushing in with his fingers as soon as Clint swallows.

"Uf," Clint protests.

"No teeth. Nod if you understand."

Loki could make him, Clint thinks, furious that he doesn't. That he's making Clint choose the intrusion. Or choose to allow it, anyway. The press of Loki's fingers against his tongue is uncomfortable and odd. If it doesn't let up, he's going to start drooling, and that's an indignity Clint's not willing to put up with. He nods.

"Good," Loki says. "Now suck."


	7. Chapter 7

Clint wakes up slowly, sliding into groggy awareness, blinking until his room in the tower comes into focus, then slamming the rest of the way awake, and bolts. Not sure where he's going, just out. Away. Fumbling with his door until it releases him into the hall.

After that, he takes a left, following habit until he finds himself in the kitchen, where someone's put coffee on. The machine is gurgling placidly, slowly filling the pot, and Clint starts to pull it free, then aborts the motion, leaving it to pace, watching his own bare feet on the cold tile, trying to work out a place to go, something to do, until he thumps into Bruce. Walking right into him with his head down.

Clint tries to jump back at the same time that Bruce tries to grab and steady him, which ends up in a weird struggle that mostly involves Banner accidentally chasing him backwards across the kitchen while saying, "Whoa, whoa, hey," until Clint's facial recognition skills kick back in.

"Banner?"

"Or Bruce." Bruce says, with a smile that's just a bit too soft to be amused. "You okay?"

"Oh man," Clint says. "Thank--Look, don't take this the wrong way, but what the fuck are you doing up?"

"Were you expecting someone else?"

Maybe Tony, after he'd seen the coffee machine on and considering it's still dark out--the city is picked out in lights outside their broad windows. Clint takes a breath and lets it out, and tries to ignore the way his shirt is sticking to his back, and his back is plastered to a cabinet. He's pretty sure he's bruised himself against the knobs and drawer pulls.

"Clint?"

"Sorry. You just--you got me by surprise."

"Maybe SHIELD should hire me," Bruce says, still with that smile, and with his hands in his pockets. Relaxed and casual, keeping his posture open instead of defensive while he watches Clint with the same kind of careful nonchalance that the rest of them do Bruce, when they think he's veering close to Hulk-out. It's annoying, Clint realizes. They're all assholes. If he was Bruce, he'd have a grudge the size of Wyoming.

"That better not be decaf," Clint says, straightening up, pulling his back away from the cabinet and changing the subject. Bruce lets him step past, but doesn't follow him back to the counter, where Clint goes poking around for clean mugs.

"Maybe you should consider decaf." It's a joke. Bruce still has that mix of gentle amusement and concern on his face. His mouth is set into a smile, but with a giveaway worried crease between his brows.

Clint salutes him with an empty mug, while he jiggles the pot free of the machine with the other hand, but says, "Hah. What I should consider is never sleeping again. Bring on the espresso. Maybe the caffeine pills," then pours half a cup, slugs it, and pours again. It is decaf. Bruce sucks.

"I like the taste," Bruce starts, when Clint makes a face and sighs.

"You've got to be kidding me."

"--of coffee. In the morning. You can pour me the rest and put your own pot on, or wait for Tony. No one's making you drink that."

"Desperation is," Clint tells him, but moves to follow instruction, getting another mug out for Bruce, then setting the cream out for him before finding the real coffee, where someone's stuffed it into a random cabinet. "I'm going to pretend real hard and hope the placebo effect gets me through."

"Well. Good luck. I hope you survive the brutal ten minute wait."

Clint stops pouring water into the machine to look at Bruce, then back at the water level in the reservoir. "God. Ten minutes? How the hell does Tony have a coffee machine that takes a whole _ten minutes_?" 

"Whoa, Clint." Bruce's smile is gone. The crinkle in his brow is deeper. Clint had gotten louder than he'd meant to, on that last bit. Maybe had been talking faster than he'd meant to, also. "Maybe you should have a seat. You're starting to worry me."

"I'm fine. I just gotta--" Clint gestures. Not really at anything. "Do stuff." Or he'll climb out of his skin, he doesn't add.

Bruce glances out the window. Hoping for daybreak and the heightened chance that someone will come provide back-up, Clint thinks, and snorts, but feels bad enough about putting Bruce on the spot that he makes himself take a couple quick, deep breaths and press both hands against the counter, to keep himself from rifling through the counter clutter.

"Clint?"

"Wrong side of the bed," Clint explains, before Bruce can tell him to sit down again. He lifts a hand so he can drop it back to the counter, hoping Bruce catches the dismissive what-can-you-do gesture and goes along with it. "I'm fine. I just--I think I'm going to go brush my teeth." And tongue. And spit until he can't remember the taste of Loki's goddamn fingers. "I'm having a weird morning."

\-----

He comes to in the same big room. Clint's decided it's a banquet hall, but this time the long table Loki had sat at is empty and plain, the carvings on all the furniture smoothed out into unadorned, polished wood. The fire is still lit, and the windows are still covered, but the wall hangings are gone, leaving the surfaces bare and making the room echo, even though some of the furs have been left, hanging over the same chairs they had been. The carpet is also still there, with its light-on-dark tree and bright border.

Clint blinks to awareness on it, lying on his stomach, face turned so the pattern spreads out in front of him in a expanse of branches. The rhythm of the pale twists not too different from looking at one of the space charts SHIELD had started compiling, after Thor and New York. 

It's disconcerting, and more so because he knows exactly where he is as soon as he opens his eyes. His room and the tower and what he'd been doing right before falling away into an unclear haze, distant like it had never happened.

Clint tamps the feeling down and smiles nastily, shifting his head on the carpet, the fibers soft against his cheek as he looks around. Loki is standing with an arm resting against the stone of the fireplace, posed like an asshole. "What? No brunch this time?" Clint asks, not getting up. Loki's brows raise slightly.

"It can be arranged," he says, pleasant. "If you like."

"If _I_ like, huh? That's funny."

Loki gives him a cool, unimpressed look. Flat, and weirdly distant, with none of his usual obnoxious gloating. Clint's not sure how to read it. If it means Loki's in a foul mood, or bored. Either of those could be bad news, and if Clint was smart, he'd watch his step. Instead, he looks away, to gaze across the carpet again, and says, "I see you kept the tree."

"It means nothing," Loki says, absent and without looking, watching the fire. "Now be quiet."

"What the fuck am I here for, if you want quiet?"

"For the company, Hawkeye. Hush."

Clint hushes, and doesn't get up. Stays where he is, flat on his belly at a point where one of the tree's branches arches towards an orb, a galaxy-swirl of leaves spinning out from it. It's one of _those_ times, Clint thinks, but at least Loki's not having him do anything but lie there while he sulks.

"Have a drink with me," Loki says, after a while, drawing Clint's attention as he straightens and adjusts his clothes. Smoothing his hand over them almost like he's brushing dust away. He's wearing shades of muted green. Woven shirt with an open collar and embroidery at cuffs and hem. Dark pants. Clint's got the same clothes as always, like Loki's not great at imagining Earthling wear, but has put a lot of thought into his own get-up.

Clint swallows, throat tight, but Loki just brushes his head gently as he passes, pausing long enough to trail a hand through his hair, and making a soft noise with his mouth, like he's calling a dog. "Come on," he says, as he moves away. "I'm not in the mood to fight with you."

Between Tony and Bruce, Clint's not unused to unstable moods, but Loki's making his skin crawl, anxious at the unpredictability of whatever's brewing. If it was Banner getting this moody and tense, Clint would clear the fuck out, but here and with Loki, there's no choice other than to get to his feet and follow Loki or stay where he is. 

Clint settles for rolling to his back, so he can watch Loki stroll across the room, to the covered windows where there's inexplicably a decanter and two half-full glasses sitting on one of the tables. Loki picks both up, pauses to consider, then holds one out in offer, head tilted inquiringly. Casual but polite, like they're old friends, then shrugs when Clint doesn't respond, and sets the offered glass back down before taking a seat and sipping from his own. Even his goddamn slouch is imperious.

"It's only wine," he says, with a snort that's a strange mix of derisive and amused. "And this is only a dream. Even if you were harmed, it's not real. We'll both wake up, back where we started. Back where ever we are now."

It's a test, Clint thinks, but doesn't get up to join him. He expects some sort of retaliation for being so stubbornly uncooperative, but Loki just lifts his own glass in mild salute and drinks, gazing at the now bare wall in silence. Shifting in his chair occasionally, but leaving Clint in peace, concentrating on some funk that Clint's pretty sure has nothing to do with him.

Or almost nothing. Judging by the new bareness of the room, he's taken some of Clint's comments personally, it looks like. The urge to mention it again is like an itch under his sternum, and normally, he'd give in to the need to score a point, any stupid point, even one that's liable to make things worse, but he can't quite pull the comment together.

For a while, there's no sound but Clint's own breathing, the snap of the fire, and the occasional clink of Loki's cup. The duller _tunk_ of it being set down on wood. It's not like it's _relaxing_ , because Loki's still a dangerous freak, and Clint's still sharply aware of every move he makes, but the quiet drags on, and the longer it does, the easier it is to think that maybe this is all Loki wants this time. To mope and drink and lord it over unwilling company while he does it.

It's not that bad, Clint thinks, and makes a face as soon as he does, because the next part of that thought was going to be, _better than being alone in the box_. His fingers dig into the carpet, where a pale branch swoops away from his face and across the floor, twisting towards the brighter border at the edge of the pattern. "So what?" he asks, stupidly, and knowing it's stupid as he says it. "No visiting hours wherever they've got you?"

Loki, almost disappointingly, just snorts. Clint's not sure if that means _obviously not_ , or if it's commentary on his visitors. Thor, probably, would go see him. Probably had, a few times, if there was any allowance for it. Clint should ask. Or maybe shouldn't. Loki and everything preceding New York isn't something he's brought up with Thor, of all people. He can't even think how he'd start to phrase it. If there's a way to ask the question that won't come off automatically accusing or just automatically weird, coming from Clint.

"Consider _this_ a visiting hour," Loki says, light and conversational. Refilling his glass before getting up and coming back to where Clint's still lying on the carpet. Bringing the decanter with him, the cut glass dangling nonchalantly from his hand, reflecting firelight off its edges like crystal. Everything perfectly, casually elegant, down to the way Loki drops to sit next to him, with just enough flop to look lazy, but not enough to slosh liquid.

"I'm not visiting," Clint says, rolling over once to make distance, on to his belly again. "You fucking abducted me."

Loki laughs and drinks and puts the decanter down on the carpet, careful to make sure it's steady, then pulls his feet in to sit crosslegged, relaxed like they're on a goddamn picnic. "You're not _missing_ ," he says, still sounding friendly and really entertained, even though Clint's sure that what he's pointing out is that no one will be missing Clint, or coming for him, or even suspect that he needs coming for. "I didn't _take_ you." He smiles. His hair slides forward and hangs, curling a little at the ends. Gently tousled in a way that's a lot reminiscent of Tony after three hour of pre-interview styling. "I'm _with_ you. This is _your_ dream"

It's unlikely, Clint thinks, that he would come up with this shit on his own, except he's had a lot of fucked up moments since the Helicarrier, where he'd thought up a lot of fucked up things, and Loki laying his hand over the back of his neck is probably less messed up than the dreams he's had where he personally and graphically murdered Coulson while blaming it on paperwork, cold stakeouts, or any number of other petty resentments that apparently were still hanging on somewhere in the depths of Clint's subconscious. 

Loki stroking his hand down Clint's back is _way_ less fucked up than that. Even when he gets his fingers under Clint's shirt and onto skin. It's a little fucked up, Clint thinks, when he pushes the fabric up, to press the flat of his hand to Clint's back and makes a quiet, pleased sound. A little hum in his throat that isn't sexual, but isn't not, either.

"That's the thing with humans," Loki tells him, not removing his hand, "How warm you are." Then he shrugs a little. "Well. Asgardians too, but--" He gives Clint's back a quick little rub, illustrating something, but nothing Clint really gets.

"It's the fire." Loki's fingers are cold from carrying the wine. With Clint's bared skin heated by the flames, it's a confused feeling. Almost registering as a burn instead of a chill, intense enough a contrast to make Clint's muscles jump when Loki slides his hand up his spine, then back down it.

"It's when you live in the sun. When you're from a world of sun."

"And summertime fun?" Clint suggests. Loki's hand is low on his back. Right against the edge of his pants, then just under it, and then is sliding up his back again, under his shirt, like they're really, really, _really_ familiar friends.

"A world of summers," Loki agrees, and takes another long sip, then refills again, judging by the clink of glass on glass. Whatever mood he's in, it involves being weirdly distant and getting smashed. His hand is low enough to practically be on Clint's butt again, fingers moving ticklishly, but it's absent. Loki's attention is mostly on the fire and his energy going mostly into sulking.

If this is all Loki wants, Clint could live with it.

He shudders hard right after he thinks it, and Loki makes a distracted soothing noise and pats the small of his back. Even after all the time he's had it against Clint's skin, his hand is cold.


	8. Chapter 8

Loki sits there contemplating the fire for what feels like hours, and Clint lets him. He's not sure why he does. It just doesn't occur to him to question it until he's back in his own bed, feeling his skin crawl and with the ghost of Loki's cool touch all over him. The back of his neck prickles. He feels strangely heavy, the way he had in the dream, while Loki sat there and petted him and ran his hand under Clint's shirt in casual exploration. There's a panicky feeling twisting in his chest, but it's hard to respond to it. Hard to pull himself together enough to sit up and swing his feet over the side of the bed.

"You look good," Natasha comments, when he passes her on his daily trek to the coffee machine. 

Clint offers her an "Ug," in greeting.

"Do you know what time it is?"

There's maybe a half inch of coffee left in the pot. Clint pours it anyway then nukes it warm. "Late?" he asks, over the brim of the mug.

"It's almost noon. I hope you weren't supposed to be anywhere."

"What are you? Steve?" Clint snips, but then has to mentally go over his schedule and make sure he _hasn't_ missed anything.

"You look like you've been hit by a truck."

"I think I'm getting too much REM sleep. Is that a thing?" Maybe having to do with blue light. There's a lot of that around the tower. It would be nice if he could blame Tony for his brain going sideways. Comfortable and concrete and handle-able.

Natasha frowns in consideration, then says, "I don't think so," but she doesn't sound like she's very sure. Clint has to smile at it, even though the creepy feeling he'd woken up with is still clinging to him. He can just about feel the press of Loki's thumb against his nipple, cold enough to make him twitch and freaky enough to make his heart thump faster, but somehow not enough to make him move away or protest.

It's too much like being under the staff's control, but at the same time not like it at all. Clint's mind had been his own, and his choices his own, and he'd chosen to let Loki ruffle his hair and nudge him onto his back and tease along the waistband of his pants. 

His coffee is thick with bottom-of-the-pot grit. "Where is everyone?" Clint asks, making faces as he tries to use his tongue to get the stuff out from between his teeth.

"Out. Around." Both of those, then, but distributed through the team. Clint grunts acknowledgement. 

" _Awake_ ," Natasha adds, and comes over to take his mug and dump its contents down the sink.

"Hey!"

"It's gross watching you do that."

The coffee's pretty gross too, but Clint scowls at her anyway, crossing his arms over his chest in indignation. Natasha ignores it, setting the mug in the dishwasher and turning to hop up on the kitchen island. "What's going on?" she asks, settling in like she's getting ready to have an actual, real conversation.

"Huh?"

"You _just_ had time off."

"I didn't _ask_ for time off," Clint snaps, picking up the coffee pot to have something to do with his hands before remembering that it's empty and setting it back, a little too hard, pushing the machine back on the counter.

"I didn't _say_ \--" Natasha starts, then stops and just gives him a hard look, like she's absorbed parts of both Coulson and Fury. Clint ignores her to get his mug back from the dishwasher and uses it to refill the coffee machine's reservoir, then decides it's not worth the trouble and puts the mug in the sink, throwing his free hand out more or less towards Natasha.

"Fine, fine. You didn't say. I didn't say. Anything else, Captain Romanov? Because if we're done, I'm gonna hit the shower."

For a second, he's sure Natasha's going to tell him to cool down, and starts ramping his temper up, but all she does is raise her eyebrows in a questioning look until Clint decides it’s easier to turn and stalk back the way he'd come than deal with her.

Showering helps. The tower's water system is amazing. Scalding hot and unlimited and Clint stays under the flow until he's lightheaded from breathing steam. He's not sure how long it takes. Maybe forty minutes, maybe an hour. It's still not long enough to wash away the crawling under his skin, or to forget how he'd stretched out to let Loki touch with more freedom--how he'd ended up half-asleep like he'd been enjoying the attention--but it's enough to wake him up the rest of the way and push the whole thing back. Make it less real in his mind. A foggier memory than it had been.

Clouded up by the steam, Clint thinks, wandering back into his bedroom with a towel around his hips, then flopping back onto the bed while he cools down. It takes a while for his head to clear and he's not sure how long that takes, but by the time he wanders back out to the common area Natasha's cleared off.

If the others are around, they're busy somewhere else. The tower feels empty and too quiet, until Clint turns the TV on to let the news fill the space up with grounding noise. Non-Loki-relevant chatter about the weather and traffic and some big function that's backing the whole city up.

Clint doesn't take much note of it, wandering in and out as he pokes his way through odd jobs. A bit of report filling here, some tinkering with arrowheads there, until he feels settled enough to start feeling bored.

Which makes him relax enough that the memory of Loki's hand on the back of his neck comes flooding back, as vivid a weight as if it was real, making Clint jump, then shudder, then make a face over the arrowheads he's working on, strewn in parts across the kitchen table. He stops to scrub a hand over the back of his head, brushing the feeling away, only to have the touch-memory move along the back of his shoulder, ticklish like a bug crawling on him.

Clint scratches, then rubs hard with the flat of his hand, just in case something _is_ climbing on him. "Ew, ew, ew," he mutters, thinking of bugs _and_ Loki, _and_ the things he's been managing to think up about Loki. 

And the things Loki had said to him while he'd been under the staff. All kinds of fucked up dictator shit about humans bowing and scraping and kissing his ass, and how much he could tell Clint was enjoying being his fucking minion. 

He scrubs the heel of one palm into an eye. Groans, "Fuck," drawing the word out in disgust. "Fuck, Barton. Come on. Think about baseball."

His spine prickles, the same sense of unease as if someone was watching him. "Baseball, baseball," Clint mutters, into both hands now. He's got to be imagining the tickle that moves up the side of his neck, the light brush in his hair. It's got to be the aircon or something. Maybe static electricity.

"What about baseball?"

Clint jumps. Bangs a knee on the bottom of the table and knocks half his arrow parts off. "Fuck. What--Steve. Don't _do_ that."

"You lose a bet?"

"I'm losing something," Clint grumbles, ducking to gather up the pieces that he'd bounced to the floor. "Where's everyone been?"

"The gym. SHIELD, where you supposedly work. Remember it?"

Clint nods at the table. "I'm doing Hawkeye things."

Steve gives it a glance, then heads to the fridge and yanks it open. Asks, "Did Hawkeye things involve lunch?"

"Not yet." Clint tips his chair back, leaning to see if he can peer past Steve to see what the leftover selection is. "Mostly they've involved miniature explosives."

Steve looks over to consider the table again, refrigerator box in one hand, and says, "Sounds more like a Tony thing."

"I couldn't find Tony." He hadn't looked for Tony. He's glad Steve's here though, because the creepy feeling is gone now that he's got someone to talk to, replaced by more of a feeling-like-an-idiot feeling. "Anyway, they're disarmed, so--" he waves his screwdriver at the mess on the table, turning in his chair to keep talking to Steve, and resting his arm along the top of the backrest. Uses his other hand to flip the screwdriver to himself, absently flicking it end over end. "You guys miss me or something?"

Steve considers that, long enough that Clint's sure he wants to say something, but is thinking better of it.

"Oh, spit it out, Cap."

"You haven't been around," Steve says, reluctantly. "Not _really_. I'm not saying you're not doing your job, but--" He lets it trail off. Finishes with a little gesture instead, lifting his hand and dropping, like he's not sure how to explain what Clint is.

Clint huffs. "Okay. Sounding a lot like Coulson."

Steve laughs. Shrugs. Goes back to rifling through the fridge, opening containers before closing them and shoving them back in.

"We could go out," Clint offers. "Grab something."

"Sounding a lot like a plan," Steve says.

\-----

The creepy feeling comes back whenever Clint's alone. Just phantom touches along his ribs or back or the dip of his waist. Clint's gone from scratching or rubbing to ignoring and trying to block it out, but it's screwing up his sniping. It's hard to sit still and be patient and wait for his target to move into position when he thinks he can feel fingers tracing his jaw or playing at the curve of his ear, but Clint tries like fuck to shut it out, and after a while it seems to work.

"It almost looks like you're forgetting me," Loki tells him, when he walks into Clint's dream a few nights later. Interrupting what's so far been a pretty great time involving Clint and a diner and something about a high stakes game of darts. The whole thing falls apart as soon as Loki shows up, turning the dream into a stupid, childish illusion. "Or did you mean to include me in this game?" He picks Clint's darts out of the board and examines them like they're a curiosity. Clint sighs.

"Oh, come on. I was--" he gestures. Winning. Not missing. Being fucking amazing. It had been nice.

"Very low-key," Loki comments, after looking around. He's testing the point of a dart, tapping it with the pad of his thumb without concern of injury. Like it's not sharp at all. "The things you come up with." He holds up the dart. Uses it to indicate the entirety of the diner, and maybe the parking lot outside, and the countryside view beyond. "Very simple joys, aren't they?"

"I'm a simple guy."

Loki laughs and walks past him to slide into a booth. It's incongruous. Surreal. He's wearing his stupid horned helmet and a deep green cloak, over black and gold. Clint's not sure if it's formal wear or armor or costume. "Want to play a little game, Hawkeye?"

"Like the one you just ruined?"

"No." Loki gives him an indulgent smile. Clint hates that look. Not just on Loki, but in general. "But we can if you like. Which is the part you enjoy? The stakes? Or playing with sharp things? Because I'm sure I can come up with a wager."

Clint takes the dart back, plucking it out of Loki's fingers to send it thumping back into the board. Hard enough that the whole point disappears into the cork. "Get lost."

Loki smiles, and offers back another dart. This time Clint takes it more carefully and holds it ready to throw. Wonders if he's fast enough to get Loki in the eye, or maybe in the back of his neck, between some vertebrae. There's not much of a gap between his collar and helm, but with a bit of luck Clint could probably make the shot.

"Are you going to throw it?" Loki asks, "Or keep it as a weapon?" There's a bit of a laugh in his voice. Like he's amused by Clint's ideas. "You might want this one too, then." He holds out the third dart, offering it like it's not a sharp object Clint's liable to stab him to death with. 

Clint snatches it. Loki holds his empty hand up, fingers splayed theatrically. "So I suppose you're dangerous now." He still sounds like he's having a great time. Clint hates the laugh he can hear under everything Loki says, like this is a joke they're both in on. 

Loki turns his hand to gesture at Clint. "Armed and everything."

It's like he's humoring a child. If Clint hadn't thrown that first dart, he'd have three shots instead of two.

Loki drums his fingers on the table-top and looks around. The diner Clint's dreamed up is half the place he used to get lunch during his early days at SHIELD and half out of movies. Real world floorplan, fifties decor, everything shiny and clean and gold lit. Loki looks completely out of place in it. "It's very charming," he comments. Clint's hand tightens around the darts.

All the activity in the diner keeps going on around them, like they aren't really there. Like _Clint's_ not really there any more, even though everything had seemed so real before Loki's appearance. The pies, the darts game, the small town outside. He's even managed to place the whole thing near the water, like Tony's beach house, creating himself a tourist trap utopia full of always-afternoon sunlight.

As far from Loki's empty castle as possible.

"Fuck off," Clint tells him. "Leave me alone."

"I think we both know that's the last thing you want," Loki comments, light. Clint knows it's a threat.

Loki sits there looking pleased with himself for a little longer, then takes a sip of Clint's coffee. Tries his pie, then pushes the plate away and gets up. "Let's play a different game, Hawkeye."

"What kind of game?"

"If you succeed," Loki says, ignoring the question and brushing past Clint to walk over and pluck the dart out of the board, tapping the hole it had left, perfectly placed in the center of the bullseye. "I'll grant you a request."

Clint glances from the dart in Loki's hand to the board, and back. He's not stupid enough to think there's no catch, but if the competition involves projectiles, then he's got a fighting chance. "You get out of my head. Permanently."

"And if you fail," Loki tests the tip of the dart, smoothing the point between his index finger and thumb. Smiles. Clint waits. Not about to make any offers. "Then you grant _me_ a request? Fair?"

"What request?" 

He's sure Loki's going to refuse to answer. Say something like _I never said you had to tell yours_ , and then spring something insane on him later, once he's agreed. Instead, Loki hums thoughtfully, then comes up with. "How about a kiss?"

"A what?"

"You understood me, Hawkeye. One kiss. Willing, no tricks."

"And if I win, you fuck off forever?" It's not that bad a gamble, if he weighs cost against risk. He glances at the dartboard again. "No screwing with the outcome?" 

"An honest game. I give you my word."

Clint doubts his word is worth all that much, and lets the suspicion show on his face, but it's worth the shot. "Fine," he says. "I'm in."

\-----

The light in the diner's changed. Turning from golden evening glow to something cooler and almost interrogation room harsh. Outside, the sky's turned to inky purples, and inside the place is deserted. Clint's not sure when that happened. It's also a lot emptier, like the details aren't holding anymore, the displays and decorations sliding away until all that's left is the room, the counter. Some stools and chairs.

Loki has a shit imagination, when it comes to Earth. Or maybe he's just bored of Clint's now that he's moved on from being patronizing about Clint's subconscious. He'd been pretty quick to get rid of Paintball City too, that first time. 

"It was cozier my way," Clint comments, as Loki takes off his helm and sets it on the counter. The aluminum strip running along the edge of it is still there, shiny in the dimmer light.

Loki doesn't answer right away, kicking a stool into the middle of the floor with his foot, before tossing his cloak over his shoulders, getting it out of his way. Then he says, "Undress," in an impatient tone, like Clint should have deduced that himself and already gotten a move on.

"What?" Clint asks.

"Undress." This time he says it with a bit more emphasis.

Clint narrows his eyes. "Why?"

Loki nods at the stool. "And then take a seat." Clint doesn't do either.

"Just your shirt," Loki clarifies, like that's the problem. "If you prefer."

"To throw darts?"

"Oh, we're not _throwing_ them," Loki says, playing with his, spinning it deftly through his fingers. Clint's not sure even he'd be that dexterous. "Now, shirt off, and sit. Or sit and shirt off. I'm not picky."

Clint heaves a breath and obeys. He's not wearing the hoodie anymore, but jeans and a soft flannel shirt in dark purple and greys, some of which may have been black, once upon a time. Now the whole thing is worn and wash-faded, and when he undoes the buttons he finds he's got a dark t-shirt on underneath. He strips that off too and dumps the small pile of fabric on one of tables, where his pie and coffee had sat, then hops up onto the stool.

"Good." Loki smiles and comes over. It's reminding Clint more and more of an interrogation, especially with the way Loki stalks around him, pacing a small circle. "Put your hands down and hold on."

It takes a second for Clint to figure out what he wants, and then he curls his hands around the edge of the seat. Hooks his heels onto a crossbar. The thing is barstool height, which means he's close to Loki's level, even though he's seated. His face is about shoulder-level on Loki, which is definitely close enough to stab him in the face.

"Now," Loki says, scraping the pad of his thumb across the point of his dart again. "Rules. As all games must have. You make no sound or move, and I disappear forever. But if you fail, then you just pay your really very small wager."


	9. Chapter 9

Loki takes his time to start, standing there considering Clint the way Steve might consider a blank page, a thoughtful frown on his face and his head tilted a little. With his helm off, his hair falls in loose, soft waves, brushing the fabric of his cloak, where its gathered on his shoulders.

He's a fucking weirdo. Clint's sick of his goddamn face, and of the ironic quirk at the corner of his mouth, like everything he does a little bit of a joke. It's a change from the last time he'd seen Loki, but the spark of humor is doing more to make Clint feel like he should brace for questioning than to think that Loki's mood has improved. He'd ask what Loki wants, but it's possible the rules are already in play. It's possible Loki's trying to trick him into accidental failure.

Clint meets his gaze. He can give Loki all the focus and attention and silence he wants and not give him a damn ounce of satisfaction. It's not like he hasn't played mind games before.

"Ready to get started?" Loki asks, almost but not quite gently. A good-cop tone Clint recognizes from times he's been captured and questioned, and that he doesn't trust at all. He swallows and doesn't move or respond. "Oh, very smart," Loki praises. "But I'm not quite so strict. You can move within _reason_." Whatever that means. "And if you wish to forfeit," Loki holds up the dart like that clarifies anything, "all you need is to ask."

Clint sets his teeth.

"Let's try," Loki says. "Say, 'please stop'." He waits, giving Clint the chance to obey on his own, then repeats, just as pleasantly, "Say, 'I surrender'. No? Would you rather have _no_ forfeit?"

"Please, I want to stop," Clint grits out, glaring.

"Of course you would still lose," Loki says, then clarifies, "The bet."

The black and white check floor had been cozy and outdated, when the room had been a diner. In Loki's new dim lighting, it looks grubby and run down. Like any number of abandoned old buildings Clint's been held or hidden out in. If Loki had more attention to detail, he'd throw in some broken tile, but instead the floor just fades into murk, shadowed in the corners. Outside, it's still a late twilight, but the window isn't doing much to make the room feel less claustrophobic. With crooked blinds over it, it's doing a lot more to remind Clint of two-way mirrors than of the open view he'd originally dreamt up.

Loki steps closer. His footfalls are loud. That's also a lot like being held prisoner, that familiar echo in a too-empty room. Just the association is putting Clint on edge, and Loki hasn't done anything more than look him over and walk around him, still like he's considering a new project. Normally Clint would make some comment. Diffuse his growing tension, goad his captor into action, and cut out the wait. Keeping his silence means there's no outlet for the tension growing in his chest, so that it's almost a relief when Loki finally brushes a hand over his shoulder.

He almost flinches, but Loki doesn't do anything other than run his hand across Clint's back. Inspecting a work surface, Clint thinks, but he's still surprised when a second later something scratches near the base of his neck. Just a short drag, unpleasant but not much more than that. A sharp point drawing against his skin for maybe an inch before lifting away again, followed by a soft hum from Loki. It's weird how _un_ painful it is, even when Loki follows it with a couple more scratches, moving across Clint's back towards his right shoulder. Short little pulls that are probably not even breaking the skin.

" _Very_ good," Loki tells him, drawing another few lines, then brushing his thumb over the lot of them. It barely stings. Clint's under no illusion that it's not going to _start_ stinging, though. His back's going to end up raw. Loki's told him about time, and what he can do with it here, and how he can probably stretch it out to as many hours as he needs, until he's used the dart tip to scrape Clint's skin clean away.

The fucking asshole.

Clint takes a breath and lets it out slowly, breathing through the sudden helplessness. The sudden sense of _can't win_. Loki's been patient, but not always, and not when he's in a spiteful mood. If Clint's lucky he'll get bored before Clint gets to the end of his endurance.

It's not a good sign that he's thinking that, before anything even starts to hurt. Loki's got him fucking played.

Like it's on cue, the next scratch is harder. It feels like getting caught on a thorn. Clint's sure this one tears the surface of his skin, and licks his lip, then bites it to redirect his attention when Loki gives him a couple more of those, and then continues, working at an even pace, free hand holding Clint steady by the back of the neck.

He was right. It's getting worse. Loki's so good at it, Clint almost wants to laugh. His even, even rhythm is almost more miserable than the rough little cuts. Clint's sure the dart point is tearing now, leaving little burning tracks in its wake, a sharper pain when Loki backtracks and goes over already-sore skin.

Clint's next breath is a gulp, followed by a wavering exhale. Loki's scratching near his spine, low on his back where it makes Clint want to twitch and arch away from the sharp point. Loki's working sideways, heading towards the sensitive skin at Clint's side, over his ribs. 

He just has to be quiet and bear it. That's all. That, and keep breathing when Loki comes back over the same marks, then works his way back up towards Clint's neck. Breathes through the way it feels like he's on fire, every nerve lighting up at the dart's touch. In a fucked up way, it's amazing. Loki's got way more time on his hands than any torturer Clint's crossed paths with before, and no goal that Clint can figure out other than to fuck with him.

The resistance is fucking pointless. Clint’s got no chance, and it's not like he's holding back SHIELD security codes or team positions or stalling so Steve and Natasha can complete a mission. He's not even holding out for Bruce to get worried enough that he Hulks out and comes to get him. It's just stubbornness and pride. Coulson would have his ass for it.

 _Gotta hang onto something, Coulson_ , Clint thinks, and takes another slow, measured breath as the unpleasant scrape moves down and across one shoulder blade, leaving a trail of heat. Loki's fingers and thumb are a firm pressure on either side of his neck, his palm a warmth against the back of it that Clint shouldn't find comforting, but at least it's a sensation that doesn't fucking _hurt_ , and he finds himself focusing on it in spite of himself, concentrating on the weight and the way Loki's grip shifts against his skin when he takes a deep breath.

Doing that pulls at the skin of his back. It feels like each little scratch is being stretched open as he inhales, to close in a hundred stinging points when he lets his breath out again. He can feel damp collecting in his eyes, and it's not just from the burn of sweat running into them. He's making rough sounds in his throat. His slow breathing is turning into a pant, no matter how hard he's been trying to keep composure. His hands are tight around the edge of the stool, the two darts he's still got under one hand digging into his palm. Their plastic fins are sharp. He's gripping hard enough that his fingers hurt, a dull counterpoint to the next scrape, high up on his back, close to Loki's restraining hand.

It's followed by a sharp dig. A small puncture that feels a lot like an insect bite. Quick, and fading into warmth almost right away. It's not even as painful as a bee sting, but the change of sensation is almost unbearable. Clint swallows. Huff his breath out. Tries to be exhaling when Loki pricks him again, to keep from tensing and making it worse. It's ridiculous, medieval torture. Clint would prefer to get tasered.

"In some places," Loki tells him, thumb stroking against the side of Clint’s neck, like he's trying to offer comfort even as he leaves another series of quick, sharp jabs, "they torment traitors to death this way." Another hot pin-prick. "And in others, it's the specialty of highly trained courtesans."

 _Thanks for the trivia_ , Clint would say, if he wasn't trying to keep silent. He's biting the inside of his cheek to keep sounds in. Forming actual words is out of the question. He shudders and inhales too hard through his nose, making an undignified snorting sound. His eyes are definitely wet now. He can feel the moisture gathering in his lashes, until the drops get too heavy, then track slow and hot down his face.

"Considered a luxury and a privilege," Loki continues, busy dropping hot little points along the side of Clint's spine, then dragging the dart back up over them. Connecting the dots, Clint thinks, darkly hysterical. He'd almost laugh, except that it comes out more like a sob, caught just in time, so that it's a soundless judder of air. "And just think, you're being treated by a prince. Of Asgard." Loki's chuckle is dark. He's got a fucked up sense of humor.

Another series of jabs, still close to the spine, but along the other side. Puncture wounds are the worst for infection, Clint thinks, and lets his breath out in something that's edging closer to helpless laughter. In the waking world, he'd need a tetanus shot. _Jabbed with a game room dart_ , he imagines himself explaining, chest hitching as he thinks about exactly what kind of a spot he's put himself in. He'd assumed too much, thrilled with the victories of his dream world, and not thinking far enough ahead to imagine what else could be done with darts. Not imagining competitions that weren't about marksmanship. He'd just jumped in. Steve's always warning him about jumping in. Hell, _Coulson_ had been warning him about leaping and looking all the way back in his newbie years.

He's a slow learner. He should have expected that the whole thing was a trick. He should have known Loki was intentionally misleading him. Loki joining him in a comfortable scenario instead of setting up his own should have been Clint's first clue.

The dart sinks into the muscle of his shoulder, going deeper now, pushing a dull ache ahead of it, and leaving a deep throb in its wake. Clint's lost the rhythm of his breath. He must be panting or something, because he's starting to feel dizzy. If he loses his balance and falls off the stool Loki would probably count it as a loss, but it's getting harder to keep himself under control. He has to clench his jaw to keep from making a sound at the next slow stab, and the one after that. A series crossing from one shoulder to the other, before Loki starts back. It's fucking interminable.

Loki's grip on his neck shifts. He's so close that his clothes brush Clint's skin as he steps around in front of him. His hand slides under Clint's chin, tilting his head up so Loki can smile at the way Clint's flushed and panting. At the way his face is wet with tears. "Oh," he breathes, like he hadn't realized how much torment he's been putting Clint through and is genuinely shocked to see him so wrecked. "And we're not even close to done."

Clint swallows. Closes his eyes. It doesn't help. The way Loki's grip has shifted reminds Clint of the time in the box, when he'd done the same. His thumb is under Clint's chin to keep him from dropping his head again and his fingers are curled around the side of Clint's neck. The base of his palm is a firm pressure against Clint's throat. He can probably feel how unsteady Clint's breath is. Can probably feel the way it catches when Loki drags the dart along the other side of his neck, from ear to clavicle. A light, ticklish threat, until the point is resting in the hollow of Clint's throat. One bright spot of pain against the soreness all over his back.

"Open your eyes," Loki orders in a whisper, then starts to push. 

Clint's eyes fly open, but in panic rather than obedience. His mouth opens to yell, but Loki's hand tightens before he can make a sound, cutting his air and voice off, leaving Clint silent and gasping as the dart digs in and in, and then stops. 

"Almost, Hawkeye," Loki says, and takes the dart away, then loosens his hold. Pats Clint's neck like he's calming an animal. "You can thank me for the assistance." He gestures with the dart. "Or we can call that a defeat."

He'd been sure Loki was about to injure him in some dire, possibly deadly way. The reprieve and the sudden return of air leaves him shuddering under Loki's hand. His arms feel shaky.

"Well?"

Clint takes another breath. Slowing himself down. Buying time so he can decide which of those options would best communicate _fuck you_.

"You have to the count of three, and then I'll have to consider that sound made. One--"

"Thank you," Clint rasps, and manages to make it sound sarcastic. He backs it up with a nasty grin for good measure, in case he looks messed up enough that Loki doesn't get the tone.

Loki pokes him with the dart. Absent little pricks just under his collarbone, heading outwards from sternum to shoulder. "For?"

"The assistance." He's got enough breath back to make it sound impatient. Like he's the one who's annoyed at the delay. One day he'll perfect Natasha's poison-sweet agreements. He should have practiced them more. It would be a handy skill.

He's still managing to annoy Loki. It's stupid. And satisfying. Clint smiles, making it look as pleasant as he can, even though his face still feels damp with half-dried tears.

"Well then," Loki says, sliding his hand down Clint's chest. "You can thank me for this as well." He rolls Clint's nipple between his thumb and forefinger, then sets the dart against the side of it. Returns Clint's pleasant smile, and drives the point through.

 _No sound, no sound, no sound_ , Clint thinks, repeating it as he concentrates on swallowing the pained noises that want to crawl up his throat. Loki's pushing the whole metal end through, slowly now that he's made the initial piercing. It hurts. It hurts like fuck. Clint's eyes are wet again. He has to keep blinking to keep the room from blurring.

"I'm waiting."

Loki is. His hands are still, one pinching Clint's nipple and the other holding the dart steady.

"Thank you."

Pulling the dart out hurts almost as much as pushing it through had. Hurts _worse_ , now that the surprise has had a chance to fade and his brain is catching up to his nerve endings. Loki's out of his fucking mind.

"You could have an adornment," Loki muses, touching the swelling flesh with the tip of the dart. It's too numb for Clint to really feel, so mostly he just registers pressure and a deeper soreness. His chest feels tender, an ache radiating up to his armpit and across to his sternum. "If I had thought of it."

Clint's throat hurts, raw from breathing hard for so long. He's suddenly aware of how thirsty he is. His lips feel dry, and like they'll crack if he smiles or opens his mouth too wide. Sweat trickles down the side of his face and burns all the way down his back. He's tired, and everything hurts, and Loki's giving him a look that's somewhere between bitter and satisfied. He's dragging the dart across Clint's chest, the point catching a little on his skin until it gets to his other nipple. Then Loki pinches the bit of flesh between his fingertip and the dart point. And pushes. The pressure increases bit by bit. Slow, until the tip digs in, then breaks skin and starts to push through.

Clint opens his mouth to pant. Feels a sound forming that he won't be able to stop, and grips the darts he's still got pressed under one hand. Tightens stiff fingers, then slides them over the edge of the stool until he can make a fist, wrapping his fingers firmly around the plastic barrels.

And then he swings at Loki's face.

\-----

And wakes up in the dark, trashing at a blanket and panting until he manages to kick it off. It's dark and close, and for a second he's disoriented and terrified, remembering Loki's threats of _smaller box_ and _too much light_ , and then he bangs an elbow into a metal wall.

The sound echoes in a way that it hadn't in the box. Clint freezes. Realizes there's a low mechanical hum all around him. The rougher sound of someone snoring. The cramped space is a bunk in a small room, the low ceiling the underside of the bed above. There's a few dim safety lights picking out the edges of a door. 

It's the fucking Helicarrier. Clint would laugh, except he might wake someone up, and he ends up stifling it into a pillow. Burying his face in it to keep quiet and in case he's about to start screaming. His chest aches with remembered, imaginary pain. 

"Barton," someone hisses. " _Barton!_ "

It's not an Avenger. 

"Huh?" Clint asks, into the pillow. Not bothering to remove it.

"You okay?"

Clint tries to remember who he's bunking with, but he'd hit the sack before his roommates has gotten back from duty, and it's just a temporary crash pad anyway, not actual quarters. He'll be back in New York by tomorrow. He can't think who it is, with his head still sleep fogged and his heart still pounding.

"Yeah. Yeah, I just--I had a weird dream." There's a grumble. Clint adds a, "Sorry," in case he'd woken someone up. There's no answer. It's a pilot, Clint thinks. he vaguely remembers checking out the names on the door, not paying real attention since they'd only be sharing the room for a handful of hours. He punches the bottom of the mattress above him, just hard enough to be felt. "I could tell you about it."

Nothing shuts up SHIELD agents like offering to share. Or overshare. There's another grumble, restless shifting and then an irritated, "Fuck off, Barton."

Clint gives the mattress another punch, then lets his arms drop over his face, displacing the pillow. He leaves the blanket where it is, in a bunch at the foot of the bunk, and tries to ignore the sharp throb in his nipple, afraid to touch it in case he finds some injury. In case the damage is as real as it feels, even though he's awake and safe, surrounded by SHIELD personnel and the vibration of the Helicarrier, almost as much a home as his bed in the tower.

They hit some turbulence in the very early morning, but otherwise the carrier flies steady, the smooth drone of its engines soothing and familiar, the hum travelling through the walls and floor, surrounding them with white noise. Clint listens to it until it's time to get up and doesn't sleep another damn wink.


	10. Chapter 10

"Well look who's home," Tony says, too loud and too cheerful when Clint stomps his way out of the elevator. "How was Fury sleepover camp?" He looks like he's having a good day, or like he's on the very very _very_ tail end of having had a good night, dressed in what Clint thinks of as his workshop jeans and a t-shirt.

"Eh."

"So like Avenger practices, then?"

But without Steve to breathe down his neck, so better, in a way. Marginally. But also a little run-of-the-mill. He's getting used to having Iron Man and Thor around and on his side, and a lot of things aren't as exciting as they used to be before that was the case.

"Or did you miss us?" Tony asks, leaning on his elbows on the end of the counter dividing the kitchen from the dining room. "Natasha almost laughed a noodle out of her nose last night. I didn't record it for you, so you'll have to take my word."

Clint grins, avoiding Tony by circling around the far side of the dining table. Not really thinking about it until Tony makes a stupid pouty face at him.

"Really, Barton? I'm hurt. So I may have been up all night and _maybe_ forgot to shower, but really? Give a guy a hug, man." He's stepping out into Clint's path, opening his arms in a joke-hug. Ridiculous, and not like he's really planning to grab Clint. More like he's opening himself up to _be_ grabbed. Like he expects Clint to fling himself at him in greeting.

"Not happening, Tony."

"What? But I babysat Natasha for you."

Clint braces himself for the hug, ducking his head and hunching as Tony thumps him on the back. "You sure it wasn't the other way around?"

"Oh, what does it matter? Rock, scissors, paper, right? Everything in its own turn, and so on. What's wrong with you? You slip on SHIELD's cheap metal stairs or something? I told Nick--"

Clint shoves him off, not wanting to think about how his chest feels bruised and how Tony had noticed him trying to protect himself from impact. Even the relatively soft impact of Tony's sleep-deprived handsiness. "Nah, I'm good."

Tony gives him a last thump and backs off, grinning. "Someone put your lazy bones to work, huh? I guess too much time slacking off on the couch is hard to bounce back from."

"Yeah," Clint grins. "Yeah, I guess so."

"So you'll be happy to know Steve wants volunteers for some morning sparring."

"I volunteer Natasha." Clint gives him another little shove and Tony obligingly takes a step back. 

"I was going to volunteer Bruce."

The two of them should be enough to keep Steve occupied, but there's no way Clint's not dragging himself up to make it to the training session. Not after Steve's politely hinting mini lecture about Clint not being fully tuned in. Just thinking about it is tiring, at the moment. There's nothing Clint would rather do less than wrestle around trying to pin Steve or have Natasha try kick him in the head.

Or maybe Natasha should kick him in the head. Natasha and cranial impact might be exactly what he needs.

"Better dust off your boxing mitts," he tells Tony, pushing past him to get down the hall so he can dump his stuff on the floor of his room and then maybe catch up on the sleep he'd missed having fucked up dreams, then trying to sleep and having _more_ fucked up dreams.

"What do you mean _dust off_?" Tony calls after him. "I'm a dedicated athlete, I'll have you know."

"I'll see you tomorrow, Stark."

" _You_ dust off some mitts. You think I don't know you're a dirty fighter?"

Clint lifts a hand in simultaneous dismissal and acknowledgement and keeps walking.

"And maybe a mouthguard," Tony adds. "I don't want any biting in my fighting."

\-----

"Hi, Clint."

Clint doesn't turn, lying on his side watching the clouds and following the crisscross of contrails out of his window. It's still bright out and the sky's still blue. It's not late enough to feel as tired as he does.

"Cap. Hey. Tony passed on your invite."

"Yeah?" There's movement. Steve settling against the doorframe, maybe, which is a thing he does when he wants to seem friendly and unthreatening before he launches into a serious private discussion about things Clint might not want to discuss. It's a great leadership move.

"Yeah." Clint rolls onto his back to glance over. He'd guessed right about the Captain lean. "Guess knocking's gone out of style around here."

"Well." Steve smiles. "Sorry about the intrusion, but you do owe me."

"Yeah, I know. Put me on your fisticuffs dance card, and I'll be there."

"I'm pretty sure that's not what our deal was."

Clint pushes himself up so he can squint at Steve. He feels bleary, and Steve looks too easy and relaxed, leaning in the doorway to Clint's bedroom like they're that kind of pal. "What?"

"Our deal," Steve repeats, still smiling pleasantly. It's pretty similar to how he looks when he has to do interviews. Sort of calm and warm and just serious enough to be charming. 

Clint frowns and scratches at his head. His hair's probably a disaster. "I'm lost," he tells Steve. "Was I supposed to do something?"

Steve's laughs. An unexpected bark of sound that Clint smiles back at a little tentatively, not sure if he's forgotten something really, really obvious. "Did we talk about this the other day? Because I might have been busy stuffing my face."

There's no answer. Steve stays where he is, still looking at Clint like he expects Clint to get up and do something, and also like he hangs out in Clint's bedroom regularly. Like walking in on Clint while he's trying to sleep is something Steve does all the time.

"Okay, fine. What deal?" Clint asks, letting his breath out in a huff. He might as well give up on his plan to kick back and put off doing anything productive until morning.

"Don't look so disappointed," Steve says, straightening up and walking over without so much as a pause to see if Clint minds. He just walks right into the room and takes a seat on Clint's bed, bouncing a little as he drops down, boyish and charming, and Clint's too damn tired to deal with Cap acting like Tony.

"I'm fucking thrilled," Clint tells him, still leaning back on his arms. Steve smiles at him in an easy, fond way that Clint's not sure he's ever seen on Steve. Most of the time, Steve looks a little sad around the edges, a little angry. A shadow under his expressions that's just gone now. Clint lets his own smile drop, till it's just sort of hanging in there. "Whatever I was supposed to do, you're gonna have to fill me in, Cap, because I'm drawing a blank here."

"That's a short memory you've got then," Steve says, still sounding pleasant and warm, but with a condescending note to it now that makes the rest of Clint's smile dissolve.

"Yeah, well. I get dropped on my head a lot. That's why Tony and Bruce are the smarts squad and I just shoot at stuff."

It comes out harsher than Clint means it to. More resentful. The lack of sleep is making him crabby as hell, and Steve's been cutting him a lot of slack for Clint to be a dick to him over a tone he might be imagining. "Sorry," Clint says, pushing up to sit up properly and so he can lean forward. He scoots a bit, making a bit more space for Steve, then folds up to sit cross-legged. "Didn't sleep great. The Helicarriers fucking noisy, and it's like three to a rack there." He looks up, giving Steve an apologetic grin. "So. What can I do for you? Someone got an eye I need to put out?"

"No," Steve says. "I just came to collect."

For just one second, Clint wonders if he'd made some drunken promise at one of Tony's fund raisers or something, but before he can say anything, Steve leans in and presses his mouth to Clint's.

"The--what the fuck?" Clint kicks--not very well, with the way he'd been sitting--and scrambles back and away, his heart thumping in panic, and his brain sure that it's a joke. That Tony's put Steve up to it. That this isn't happening.

Steve doesn't follow or grab him. Just stays with one hand up like it's still resting on Clint's shoulder. He looks hurt and disappointed. "So much for promises," he says.

"Loki. You--Don't wear his face." Clint's back is hard against the wall. Like he's trying to disappear into the drywall. He can see Steve is just a skin now. All his expressions too simple, boiled down to cartoonish approximation. There's Steve's friendliness, but none of the dry teasing. His sad frown is a mocking caricature. " _Stop it_."

"I thought I'd help you," Loki says, still wearing Steve. It's freakish now that Clint's caught on. "You don't want to kiss this paragon of good heartedness?"

"Leave him alone."

"Oh, _fuh_ ," Loki says. The noise a dismissive huff of air. "He's not here. It's still just you and me." He smiles. A charming impersonation of Steve's make-nice expression, before it dissolves and Loki's there, sitting on the edge of Clint's bed with his legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankle.

"No."

"No? How about this one then?" Natasha smiles at him. Seductive, her lips full and red, and her eyes half-mast. Peering flirtatiously at Clint from under dark lashes.

" _No_."

Natasha's nose wrinkles. "Even if I showed you my breasts, Hawkeye?" She moves like she might be about to unbutton her blouse and Clint flicks his eyes away, focusing hard on a bit of fluff on his blanket, trying to shut out even his peripheral vision, because it's not like hasn't _seen_ Natasha before, but this way it's wrong and dirty and creepy and like Loki's violating her as well.

"Oh, don't tell me," Loki says, voice suddenly deeper. Clint looks up.

"Am I beautiful now?" Thor asks. His smirk is buffoon-confident. Like the jerks at Tony's parties, cocky and privileged and sure of their desirability. All he's missing a girl on either arm and a red carpet.

"Go away."

"You don't find me irresistible?" Thor leers. Slouches, in a way that Clint's sure is supposed to look lazy and seductive at the same time. "Because whatever you choose, remember that you promised _willing_."

"I didn't--" Clint starts.

"Move? You did more than move. You attacked me," Loki points out, sliding closer, reaching a hand out to grab Clint by the front of his shirt. "And I believe you were forbidden from addressing me."

Clint rewinds. Remembers saying his name. "I wasn't--"

Loki slaps him hard with his free hand, then pulls Clint down, hard enough that he lands on his front, gets dragged down the bed, and then Loki's pressing him down by the back of the neck, still looking like Thor.

"Stop," Clint yells, thrashing. "Stop _wearing them_." He's furious. Panicked. Angry. Disgusted, on a visceral level.

"How about the _monster_?" Thor suggests, in a low, sweet tone. It's slimy. "Choose."

Clint struggles. It feels dirty to say, "You," but it would be worse to choose one of his teammates, like he's helping Loki to degrade them, even if might be easier to have the illusion and pretend to believe in it. "I choose you, you asshole."

Thor melts off Loki like a cloak being dropped. "Oh, really?" Loki asks, and leans down, putting his face close to Clint's. "Make me believe it."

"Fine. Let me up."

"But first we're going to address your--well, your _address_ , I suppose."

Clint's at an awkward angle to glare, but he does his best. Loki's pin is too solid to fight, and ineffective thrashing is just giving the asshole what he wants. "Okay. Fine. Address away."

He's not sure what he expects. To be choked out, maybe, or to have Loki smack him in the face a few more times. Definitely not to have his pants yanked down and for Loki to spank him hard across the ass. Hitting Clint with the flat of his hand twice more before Clint gets over his shock enough to be offended, then angry, and then start fighting.

"You _were_ warned," Loki points out, hitting harder. "And corrected before."

"You fucking _made me_ ," Clint yells, furious at the indignity. He's pulling the sheets loose with his struggling. The blanket is a tangle around one of his feet, and one of his pillows is on the floor, the other thrown against the wall. There's nothing in Clint's reach that would make an even halfway decent weapon, and that's assuming he can break free of Loki's grip. "You made me say it, you asshole."

"Mm. The first time it was to teach you. Clearly the lesson didn't take." He lands another hard smack. It hurts like a bitch. Loki's too strong for Clint to fight off, and he's hitting hard enough that Clint's making undignified grunting sounds, trying to bite back louder cries. 

"Fuck," Clint snarls. " _Fuck_." Loki doesn't let up. Just keeps hitting with a steady rhythm. Loud, continuous smacks, evenly distributed across both cheeks. No one's beaten Clint's ass since he was a kid, and the matter of fact way Loki's talking about lessons is making the angry humiliation crawling up Clint's chest even worse, heating his face and just about choking him, he's so pissed. " _Stop_."

Loki doesn't. He also doesn't offer any terms, which means he's not going to let up until he thinks he's made his point. Clint's gulping air, not meaning to lose control, but it feels like each strike is landing on deeply bruised flesh. It feels like his skin is on fire, and the muscle underneath more sore with each blow. It goes on and on until Clint's out of breath, panting to keep from crying out, half hoping he can make himself so lightheaded that he passes out.

"Now get up," Loki tells him, once he's limp and aching, then doesn't wait for Clint to comply, but just drags him up by the back of his neck, then pushes him so that he’s sitting on his knees, with his heels digging into his sore ass.

"Hunh," Clint manages, then swallows to clear his throat and thinks better of trying to talk again.

"And now, about our wager," Loki reminds him.

 _Fuck our wager_ , Clint would tell him, but he's still breathing too hard to get the words out and with his pants still pulled down to expose his ass, the last thing he wants is for Loki to start playing dress-up with his teammates' faces again. As fake as it might be, Clint doesn't need even the illusion of them witnessing this.

Loki just looks at him for a bit, his eyes travelling from Clint's red, puffing face down his body, and he quirks a lip at way Clint's exposed and not doing anything to cover up. 

"Willing--" Loki starts.

"And no tricks," Clint finishes, and laughs. An unsteady sound that he regrets as soon as he hears it.

"I'm waiting."

Clint pushes, getting up on his knees. He's fucking hanging out of his pants, but he's also kneeling on the fabric, and trying to yank them up doesn't do much. It's better to get on with things and be done. Satisfy Loki, so he'll leave for a while and let Clint sleep.

It's still hard to make himself lean towards Loki, bringing a hand against his shoulder for support. To steady himself. However Loki decides to read the gesture is his problem. And then Clint stops to gather himself. Loki smiles.

 _Get it over with_ , Clint tells himself, and presses his mouth to Loki's. He's not sure if he's supposed to use tongue. The idea is repulsive, but it's also possible Loki will declare it not a real kiss and invalid if he doesn't, and then he might decide to draw his game out even longer. Might decide Clint had lied and was in need of more correction.

He pauses again, trying to figure out what Loki wants him to do. If Loki wants him to fail, or obey. The only way Clint wins any part of this is to cut things as short as he can, and give Loki as few excuses as possible, which means playing along. 

He braces himself, hand tightening on Loki's shoulder, and pushes his tongue against Loki's lips, testing and hoping to be rebuffed. Loki lets him in. Kisses back. Presses his own tongue against Clint's and into Clint's mouth. Slow and gentle and letting Clint take the lead, like they're lovers. His hand is a gentle pressure on Clint's hip, thoughtfully helping him keep balance.

Clint's not sure how long he's supposed to kiss for. If it's up to him to pull back, or if he's supposed to keep going until Loki's done with him. He keeps going, making himself relax and let it happen and let his mind wander until Loki pushes him back and ruffles his hair. He looks pleased.

"Well done, Hawkeye." 

Clint would snarl something back, but he's fucking exhausted and ends up nodding instead. Loki smiles and leans forward to kiss him on the forehead, like he's a favored child. After all the insult, Clint can't muster a reaction other than to be glad that Loki seems to be winding down.

"Now do you think we should forget that you attacked me?" He pauses. Makes a face that's a sarcastic approximation of pity. "Well. _Attempted to_ , anyhow."

There's more. Clint slumps and makes another attempt to hitch his pants back up.

"But if you apologize," Loki starts, then lets it trail off and gives Clint another once-over before his look turns almost fond. "You're tired. We'll speak about it next time." And then he's gone, just like that, and Clint is lying on top of his rumpled blanket and disheveled sheets, with late evening sun in his eyes.

He barely takes the time to make sure he's decent before he's on his feet and out in the hall, stalking around with no tactical caution whatsoever, flinging doors open and checking closets like a scared kid. "JARVIS. JARVIS, is anyone in the tower?"

"On the Avengers floors," Jarvis starts.

"I mean intruders," Clint interrupts.

"No one is here who shouldn't be."

"Where'd he go?"

"There is no sign of--"

"He was here a second ago."

"Who are you--"

It's a good thing JARVIS doesn't take offense, because Clint's not letting him get to the end of any of his sentences. "Loki. _Loki_ was here. Where the _fuck_ did he go?"

"No one was here, Agent Barton. You were alone."

"Like hell I was alone." Clint snaps. He can still feel the ache of Loki fucking spanking him. The heat in his skin. The strain in his thighs, from bucking and fighting and trying to get away. There's no way he'd dreamt that, or is imagining it now. It feels like the skin is inflamed, and pulls when he moves. Even the brush of his sleep pants is unpleasant.

"He was here. You've got--Your sensors."

There's a pause while JARVIS checks. Then he reports, "My sensors are functioning normally. Should I report your concern to sir?"

Clint laughs. It's a hollow, freaked out sound. "No. God, no. I just--I think I had a dream. It's okay. I'm gonna--" Clint gestures. Realizes he's never been sure exactly what JARVIS can pick up, and finishes with, "sleep on the couch."

"Rest well, Agent Barton."

"Yeah," Clint says, and absently rubs at his chest. "Sure."


	11. Chapter 11

Tony throws him twice. It's infuriating. "We're supposed to be _boxing_ ," Clint complains, still flat on his back on the mat.

"Boxing's not a real world fight," Tony tells him. "Someone comes at you with a knife, you think you just need to get your gloves up?"

Clint remembers giving that lecture. Or that excuse, really, when he'd suckered Tony a few times for the hell of it. "Funny, Stark."

"You've gotta learn to fight proper."

Clint doesn't get up. "Call me dead and let's pack it up."

"Already? Steve hasn't even broken a sweat yet."

"Maybe you should teach him to fight proper," Clint suggests. He doesn't bother moving until Tony huffs--it's hard to tell if it's annoyance or a laugh--and offers a hand. Clint gives Tony a sour look, but takes it and lets Tony pull him back to his feet and get in a couple easy hits. Ducking close to Clint's body to land a playful double jab against his ribs, trying to bait Clint into another round so he can drag out his winning streak. 

Clint goes with it, letting Tony gently pummel him towards the edge of the mats, where he's left a towel and a water bottle. He's got a vague plan of squirting Tony when he gets it in his hand, and maybe get some water in his eye, but that would definitely set off a round of at least goofy pretend-sparring, and he'd rather tag someone else in. Maybe Natasha. Natasha's usually good for defending Clint's honor, except that when he reaches out to offer a palm-slap, she grabs his wrist instead and tugs him off the mats.

"Come on. Don't tell me you don't want to teach Tony a real shoulder pin?"

"Teach me the thing with the thighs," Tony demands, letting Clint abandon him still on the mats. "I'm in the _zone_. I bet I can get it today. I bet I can make it _sexy_."

Natasha gives him a look, amused around the edges, but Clint's sure she'll take Tony up on the challenge, and in a way that Tony will probably regret.

"Unless you want _me_ to teach him the thigh thing?" Clint asks, when Natasha doesn't let go of his wrist. "I could do it, but no promises on that sexy part." He aims the last part of that at Steve and adds a grin, mostly because Steve's just standing there with his arms crossed, looking serious. 

"Come do a few rounds with me, Hawkeye."

Clint sighs, but steps away when Natasha lets him go, uncurling her fingers deliberately to make some point that goes way over Clint's head. "Have fun without me," he says as he pulls free.

"That's when we have all the best fun."

It's too much work to retaliate with anything more than a rude gesture, that Tony doesn't even bother to dignify as he turns his attention to Natasha, and fancy-footworks his way backwards across the mats, making distance before doing a pointless little ducking-weaving bob. Clint retrieves his water bottle and clicks the top open while Steve decides what he wants to do, looking at Clint like he's running options through his head. It's hard not to look at his mouth.

He's probably going to decide on hand-to-hand, Clint thinks, flicking his gaze away. Counting today, he's developing a track record of flubbing close-up fights against Tony, which doesn't bode well for his chances in a close-up fight against Steve.

"What happened with SHIELD?" 

It takes Clint off guard. "Huh?"

"SHIELD. You've been weird."

"Nothing happened. It was a training run. Scrambled some fighters, shot out of some airlocks, standard weekday stuff."

Steve doesn't mention that Clint's standard weekday had been more sluggish than that recently, but Clint can tell he's thinking it by the way he frowns. A not-quite disappointed expression, like he's more concerned by Clint's bullshit than anything Clint's been doing. It's a very Coulson look.

"Let's run some laps," Steve says, instead of passing any judgement.

"Oh, goody. Laps."

"It's not a race--"

"I don't know why you bother saying that," Clint grumbles, closing his bottle against his palm and tossing it. "Do you think any of us are actually trying to beat you?"

"But keep up."

It's a test. Clint's sure it's a test, which is confirmed when Steve jogs to a near stop an eternity later to let Clint make up the difference, then picks up the pace again, slow enough that Clint can puff along a half step behind, falling further and further back until Steve takes mercy on him and calls a halt.

"Almost...almost had you," Clint puffs, braced with his hands on his knees while he gulps air. Then he reaches out and slaps Steve's leg. "Tag."

Steve doesn't acknowledge it. "I want you to see medical," he says.

"Shit. I'm _fine_ , Steve. It's not my fault you're a fucking human locomotive."

"Or you can tell me what the hell is going on with you, before you're too slow on the draw one of these days and get someone killed."

"Slow on the draw. Pff."

"Or get _yourself_ killed."

Clint opens his mouth to retaliate, but Steve holds up a hand. "Natasha says--"

" _Oh_." That explains a lot.

"Medical or spill, Barton."

There's a silence. Clint lets it go on a little too long to be able to say, _I've got nothing to spill_ , and come off convincing. He's also not about to tell Steve that he's come up with a pretty solid idea of how Steve's lips would feel against his own, that he can't stop reimagining every time Steve's mouth moves. "Fine," he sighs, finally. "If it gets you off my back, do your worst."

\-----

Clint comes back with a clean bill of health that he smacks down on the kitchen counter in front of Steve like he's placing a bet. Or proving a point. A bit like he's vindictively presenting evidence of betrayal. He's probably putting more heat into it than is warranted for what's really a pretty standard request, but he folds his arms over his chest anyway and waits for Steve to stop looking at him and pick up the paper, then read carefully down it.

"Just skip to the end. To where it says 'shove it, Captain Rogers'."

That's definitely too much heat, and only gets Steve to look at the report closer. "It says I can request a more complete evaluation."

"Yeah? Who died and made _you_ Phil?"

Steve has the decency to not take the opportunity to say, _Phil did_ , which is big of him because in his shoes, Clint would do it. The low blow is usually also a pretty solid, effective blow, but Steve just smiles a little and folds the papers in half, to tuck under his tablet for closer reading later. It's pretty obviously a dismissal. Clint doesn't go, perching his butt on the edge of one the stools instead, then propping an elbow on the counter to continue arguing.

"Don't think I won't do it, Clint."

He doesn't even sound unfriendly. Clint deflates. "I don't need a more complete evaluation. What bullshit is Natasha telling you?"

"That according to JARVIS--"

"So this info is third hand and coming through Tony's robot friends? Does Tony know?"

"That you're running around looking for Loki, or that Natasha ran through the security?" Clint's aware that Natasha checks the tower security. _He's_ checked it for her, a few times. After her undercover job there, she still knows the ins and out of the place second only to Tony. The weak points and the dead zones, the ways to break and enter if someone really, really wanted to and had the right information. Her questioning JARVIS hadn't had anything to do with him, probably. 

Clint scrubs a hand over his face, suddenly aware again of how tired he is. "The first one," he says, then gestures dismissively, like it's no big deal. "I was half asleep, Steve. It's not--Look, we've all seen _you_ talk in your sleep--"

It's the wrong thing to say. Steve's face goes closed off and serious, and his eyebrows raise a bit in what might be surprise, might be a _don't try me_ expression, or maybe a _don't go there_ one. Clint's smart enough to not push it, but he does say. "I don't need more eval. I just need a nap."

Steve slides the paper back out from under his tablet and holds it up in question.

"I told them. They gave me sleeping pills. But you've gotta get at least five hours in, or don't bother waking me up to fly us anywhere."

"Noted."

"I don't see how this is going to improve that draw you're so worried about."

"Maybe I just want to keep Tony from getting too full of himself."

"Well," Clint says, getting back to his feet, "I'm with you on that one."

\-----

The pills kind of work. It's not great sleep, and he has screwed up dreams where the edges of everything push and ripple like something's trying to punch its way in, but other than that nothing really nuts happens, except that waking up is like drifting up through thick syrup, with awareness oozing back slowly, leaving long minutes where he's half there and half not, followed by a good couple hours of muzziness before he starts to feel alert at all. The whole thing is a fucking bad idea, but on the other hand, it's nice to be rid of Loki, even if it means his dreams are just incoherent blurs, shot through with an uneasy sense of being lost and having no solid ground. Part freefall memory and part stress dream, but it fades with the sluggishness, so if all their emergencies have the decency to stick to standard work hours, there's no problem.

Until he starts to just zone out in the middle of the day.

Or at least, Clint's pretty sure that's what's happening, when he thinks he catches a glimpse of green cloak and dark hair, then is jolted out of it by Natasha nudging him with an elbow and asking if he's listening.

"Yeah. Sure. What were you saying?"

Natasha doesn't go on, like she's waiting for an answer.

"Okay, I missed it," Clint admits. "Run it by me again?"

They're just in the street, so there's nothing suspicious or worrying about his distraction, and Natasha just huffs in annoyance and repeats, "I have to go out tonight."

"Right. Say hi to Sitwell."

"I should be back in a day."

Clint looks at her a bit more carefully. "Sure."

She doesn't look like she thinks someone is watching them or listening. Her attention is more on him than on their surroundings. "Are you taking this opportunity to confess?" he asks. "So you can leave with a clear conscience? Because I already know you informed on me, you narc."

That gets him an annoyed sound and an exasperated gesture. "I told Steve to keep me out of it."

"I'd have figured it out, _Natalie_."

Natasha gives him a dubious look, which means she'd probably provided Steve with a passable cover story. That or they'd talked about him and Steve had had his own ideas already, that Natasha had just corroborated, based on being ears-deep in Tony's home security.

"You'll be down a body," Natasha says, continuing down the sidewalk. It gives Clint a good reason to look away from her and cover for doing another scan of the street, to see if he can catch whatever it was he'd seen before, that his mind had interpreted as Loki. Some guy in a jacket, maybe. Maybe a big sweatshirt.

"We'll be careful," he says. Whoever it was is gone. "I've got their back."

"I know."

She doesn't sound happy about it.

\-----

Clint tries to not think about her tone, later, when something gets the jump on him and the only reason he doesn't get his head wrenched off is because Thor happens to be close by. He's only managed to push up to his elbows, breathing hard, while Thor is already throwing the thing over the edge of the building. It's mechanical or buggy--Clint hadn't gotten a good look--and flashes dully as it disappears, to be collected by SHIELD personnel below.

"Can you fight?" Thor asks, dusting his hands off against each other in an infuriatingly casual gesture, hammer hanging from his wrist. He sounds just curious, like he's still not sure how much damage a human can take, and should check in even if the hazard seems minor to him. Faced with it, Clint's not sure he'd admit to anything even if he was missing a whole arm.

"I'm good. Thanks for the save."

"They're strong jumpers," Thor warns him, like Clint hadn't noticed. "Watch above you."

"Got it."

Thor nods, spinning his hammer, but waiting until Clint gets back to his feet and gets an arrow ready. Then he says, "Be careful," in a gently pissy way that would normally be hilarious, and launches, leaving Clint alone on the rooftop and in his dust.

"Gotta get me one of those," he mutters to himself, retaking position, and this time making sure he's got a wall at his back so anything that drops will at least have to drop in front of him. "Positions?"

It sucks to admit that he's lost track of the team, but Tony fills him in without any extra commentary, giving him Steve and Bruce. Tony's high and moving too fast to be a Clint problem, and Thor is en route to somewhere, probably to assist Steve. Down below, the road is clear. "Got it. I'm relocating. Heading East."

There's a double affirmative. Steve and Tony. Hulk's not great at keeping a comm in, and Thor tends to be bad at feedback, just assuming that his hearing and understanding is taken for granted. "Thor?" Clint prompts, already heading towards the next building and the frontline of the fight.

"Teaching my brother?" a voice in his ear asks. "Now there's a task worth centuries."

"Moving or losing, Hawkeye." It's Tony. Overhead, and not sounding like he's noticed anything other than the dead stop Clint's come to, doing a loop to double back and do another pass.

"Moving. How's comm security?"

"Comm security," Tony huffs. "JARVIS, give Hawkeye a pep talk."

"The Avengers channel is closed and secure, sir. SHIELD is included on frequency two."

"I think I'm getting bleed over."

"We'll check it. In the meantime, keep chatter to a minimum." That's Steve. Clint strains to hear other voices, but there's nothing, until he's setting up his new post and scanning for threats, and then Loki says, with lazy amusement, 

"It's not so easy to keep me out, you know. I'm on, as you might say, _many_ frequencies."

"Oh god," Clint says, before he thinks, and gets Cap coming back with,

"Hawkeye?"

"Nothing. We're all clear."

"It's more difficult when your mind is unformed, I'll admit. And less interesting. It's hardly worth the effort, if it's just to wander through a fog."

This time he's not asleep or dozing or letting his mind wander, but fully alert, scanning the street for dangers to the team, and hearing Loki's voice with perfect clarity at the same time. 

"Hearing anything on comm, guys?" Clint tries, taking the risk. He can hear his heart thumping, almost loud enough to overpower the static that means incoming audio.

"Just you. Necessary communications only."

"Why? Is this action classified? You think no one's noticed downtown is under attack?"

He's gotta be annoying Steve, considering he's the one who'd questioned comm security in the first place, but letting the line stay silent means leaving room to hear things, and he'd rather that be Steve chewing him out than Loki musing aloud about which conditions are the most fun to mess with him under.

"I'm coming down."

"Stay high."

It's too quiet high, out of the action. Nothing to do but wait and occasionally call out enemy movement, or SHIELD maneuvers, keeping everyone coordinated. It's like he's turned into an unofficial Coulson, just hanging out up top instead of in a surveillance van or tactical center. 

"There's nothing going on up here, Cap. I need some action."

"Hawkeye."

That's a warning. Clint sighs and nocks an arrow, staying where he is, even if he doesn't have a good shot at anything, and a pretty shit view of their friendlies to boot. "Fine. Then I'm moving in."

"At least you're bad with direction in general," Loki muses. "Or I might take offence." 

He'd taken enough offence. Clint doesn't say so, and not just because the Avengers might hear.

"Once we're even, I'll take it into consideration." It's almost apologetic. Clint doesn't bother trying to figure out what consideration might look like, to Loki. 

"What do you mean _even_?" he asks instead, releasing his arrow as for a second one of the jumper appears in a gap between buildings, then drawing again. He's too obstructed to be good for much more than potshots.

"You talking to me, Hawkeye?" Tony. Clint's not sure where he is, exactly.

"Position?"

"Hawkeye's not keeping tabs," Tony reports, as if Steve hadn't heard the question. "Barton--"

Red flashes, low between some buildings. "I see you. You're too far out. Bring the perimeter in."

Tony sighs, a digitalized huff over the suit comms. "I always have to play sheepdog."

"Thor--"

"I didn't say I need _help_."

"Ordering a prince of Asgard? How high and--well. _Mighty_ of you, and pathetic of him."

Clint sets his teeth to keep from letting another response slip, and narrows his eyes, focusing on the street where Steve is fighting and Tony is driving the jumpers to. "You're gonna have a wave of them, Cap. Let me come in."

"Stay. Anything gets past me, they're yours."

Clint swallows. Nods, then says, "Got it. Standing by." 

Waiting is torture. Loki's commentary turns into phantom touch--an almost real pressure at the back of his neck that makes his skin prickle with goosebumps and his hair raise, then travels up against his scalp, like some ghost is ruffling his hair. Clint takes a breath, counts it out, and releases, trying to banish the sensation if not the voice, keeping his eyes on the targets when he sees them, and on probable trajectories when he doesn't, turning his concentration away from himself and his surroundings. Shoot, draw, no distraction. It's a relief when the enemy closes and he finds himself in the middle of a fight, with no time to process anything beyond Steve's orders and immediate danger.


	12. Chapter 12

They are, mercifully, rounded up immediately after the fight and herded into a debrief and brainstorming session, and Clint's never been more grateful to see the inside of a SHIELD office, or to be stuck in the same room with Tony and Bruce and a handful of uniformed techs arguing about bug, alien, or machine. They've got a bunch of holo-screens up, replaying fight tape and projecting schematics, and that means no one's watching Clint try not to twitch, or paying attention to the way he's chewing at his thumbnail, digging the edge of a tooth into the quick for distraction. All the blue light around him is dizzying, and if he's gone for months without it making him think of Loki and the staff and the tesseract, he's doing a shit job of putting it out of his mind now. The low whisper in his mind is fainter than before, more memory than actual sense, but just as unsettling. Clint really doesn't want to think of Loki as being seductive, but he is. His voice a warm murmur, his carriage more refined than Thor's. He could be charming, if he wanted. If he had any of Thor's sincerity.

The subject never comes back to Clint's off kilter commentary. That's not unusual, when they've just wrapped up a fight and are preparing for the possibility of another round. Comm weirdness isn't exactly an immediate worry, and none of them are hurt, which means Steve is free to immerse himself in the theories Tony and Bruce are offering up for dissection, and to start working on the bugs' motives. 

It's not Clint's field, so he's only half listening, waiting for the discussion to start making sense, and for targets to start being outlined. The comm exchange is going to be on file. He's not stupid enough to think that Steve hadn't noted it and wouldn't be going back over it later, but Clint can't really remember what he'd said. Which parts of Loki's voice and touch he'd responded to out loud and which he'd only thought. Probably, he should worry about that--the trouble he's having pulling apart thought and reality--but he's too goddamn tired. The bug that had landed on him had thumped him good into the roof, and he's starting to feel the effects of the impact in an all-over ache. As soon as they're dismissed to let the techs hand their data off to a relief team and to let everyone else have a break, Clint makes himself scarce. Just slips away without a word, fading out the way he might if he was pulling back from an op, then skips out on the tower because he's pretty sure Steve will want a word--another word--with him, in favor of the relative privacy of a SHIELD crash pad, where, with Natasha out of town, it's unlikely anyone will bother him.

He's drifting on the edge of sleep, falling in and out of a dreamless fog, when Loki walks in. Sleeping pills, Clint remembers, a distant thought. He'd left them in his room, tucked between his nightstand and the wall, even though he'd admitted their existence to Steve.

"Trying to lock me out?" Loki asks, head tilted curiously. He looks around at the formless shapes that are the best Clint's subconscious can do, in the face of utter exhaustion. "I hope you're not too disappointed. It's harder when you're awake, but I suppose the timing can be your choice." His smile is indulgent. "Did you enjoy when my brother saved you? His showboating goes over very well on Asgard. The more flash, the better."

"Leave me alone."

Loki give him a look. Sighs. "How many times are we going to cover that ground?" he asks. "Because we can revisit the lesson if you insist, but," he gestures, waving his hand at Clint like that clarifies anything. "The repetition is tedious, and I do know you're not as slow as some Midgardians." His lip quirks. "Not as quick as some, though."

"We don't need to revisit," Clint tells him, though maybe in the box he'd be able to catch a nap. Still, the idea of the blank walls and the silence makes him shiver, and of course Loki notices and smiles, almost kind.

"Let's go somewhere more pleasant, hm? Someplace more open. You still owe me retribution."

"Talking in my ear wasn't retribution?" And the ghost touch. He's sure that had been Loki's doing and not just his imagination.

Loki laughs, and doesn't answer, but just starts to walk away, pausing to turn his head back towards Clint and say, "Come," in a firm, friendly voice, like someone might call for their dog. Clint takes a breath, swallows his anger, and comes.

\-----

The fog doesn't last. It doesn't really go anywhere, either. Clint just finds himself following Loki until they're making their way through a wood, and time and form become relevant again. Loki's wearing boots and dark trousers. Rich green cloak over it, with bits of gold glinting in the lining. He has it pinned at one shoulder with a brooch that could be a ram's head, could be some Asgardian glyph. A flat shape with two arches, echoing his helm and engraved with an intertwining pattern and dulled, less reflective sections. His sleeves are gathered up in leather gauntlets, laced along the inside of his arm, keeping the fabric out of the way of fighting or hunting, or whatever the hell they're supposed to be doing here.

"No pizza parlor this time, huh?" Clint asks, climbing up and over a fallen log. It's got impressive girth, and is slippery with moss. Somehow, Loki navigates it as smoothly as a staircase, while Clint is left to scramble, getting smudges of earth and rotting bark on his hands and knees. He pauses to clean himself off, noting that he's not dressed in his own clothing this time, but in something more like Loki, but simpler. A cloak, so soft a purple it's nearly gray, and black underneath, arms wrapped with long strips of fabric from wrist to elbow instead of encased in gauntlets. He's even got a weapon. A sleek, wooden bow and a quiver of arrows, fletched in real feathers. Unfamiliar spots and stripes that Clint doesn't doubt are as effective as any high tech synthetic SHIELD R&D could outfit him with. Probably as effective as anything Tony could outfit him with. Loki watches him take inventory and smiles.

"Do you feel dangerous again?" he asks, ignoring Clint's remark and sounding genuinely curious. "Prepared for attack at any moment?"

Clint doesn't. He feels vulnerable and disgustingly nervous. Tense with expectation, because he's sure this is a game or a test, or something having to do with his having tried to stab Loki in the face with a dart. "Retribution," he says, echoing Loki's earlier mention of it.

"Yours or mine?" Loki asks, like Clint's the one orchestrating how this plays out, and he's just asking after Clint's plans. 

"We could call the whole thing off," Clint offers, refusing to be baited. "Call it even and walk away."

"Ah, yes. Back to my cell. A preferable situation for you, I imagine."

Clint thinks of his empty box and has to admit Loki's got a point. "Can't you read books?" he asks anyway. "Don't you have books on Asgard?" Or he could practice math. Clint's pretty sure Bruce had alluded to dealing with custody and being on the run by studying algorithms or doing equations or something, and Loki seems like he could be the bookish kind, just in a less lovable way than Bruce.

"You got me a costume," Clint says, changing the subject. "That's disturbing."

Loki waves it off as if Clint had thanked him. "Your garb wasn't fit for the terrain."

Giant trees aside, the woods don't look like rough going, but Clint doesn't argue the point. Loki playing dress up with him isn't worth arguing over. Not with retribution on the table. "Is this the part where you feed me to bears?" Clint asks, mostly because he's sure it isn't. That would be too fast and easy for Loki. His style is more slow and vindictive. It's more likely he'd make Clint hunt centaur, just so they can relive the glory day of Clint being a mindless weapon, without morality or loyalty to anything but Loki's will.

"This is the part where we enjoy the Realms," Loki answers, setting off again. "You should make the most of the opportunity. It's not often your kind get the privilege."

It's a nice place. Clint has to admit that much. Fairy-tale lush, with dappled sunlight filtering to the forest floor and fallen leaves as big as rugs, springy underfoot. He doesn't ask Loki about giant squirrels or if they're at risk of being eaten by a songbird. Judging by Loki's relaxed stroll, he's not worried about either of those things, or any other threat. He's barely paying attention to Clint, even though Clint's armed and deadly and at Loki's back, arrow nocked and ready to draw, just in case.

Loki's cloak is thick, soft folds draping artfully across his back from shoulder to shoulder, his hair tied up in a knot, leaving his neck exposed and pale between the dark of hair and fabric. Clint imagines the anatomy beneath, the space between vertebrae where an arrowhead might sever his spinal cord. It's not a realistic shot, but he pictures it anyway, eyes narrowed, looking away from the target only to check his footing or when he needs his hands to navigate some obstacle. Loki, for his part, seems oblivious, leading the way through barely-changing scenery, Clint following loyally at his heels.

"I should have chosen a place with an open sky," Loki says finally, looking up at the undersides of the leaves above them. "Feel the sun." He looks at Clint. Scans the weaponry he's got at the ready. "You don't miss it the same way, I suppose."

"What are we doing here?"

"Walking."

Loki's unarmed. No staff, no hammer, not even a walking stick. Clint could easily lift his bow and fire, but he doesn't. Keeps the arrow ready, but aimed down, bowstring tight against his fingertips but not drawing it. He can feel his breath pick up and his heartrate climb as Loki stands there smiling at him. After several long moments of watching Clint silently work himself into a contained panic, he turns away and gets back to making his way through the trees.

Clint looks down at his bow, at where his fingers are holding the arrow steady, and closes his eyes against the wash of helplessness. "Funny," he says, when he looks up again.

"Just because you can't attack me, doesn't mean you're _utterly_ useless," Loki tells him, without turning. "In fact, you're more useful if I can trust you. Are you thinking of putting a sharp point through my eye? Of how much you'd enjoy it?" He pauses, half turned while he waits for Clint to get moving and close the distance between them.

"I think about a lot of things," Clint tells him, falling into position like when he's covering Steve. "Don't take it personally."

Loki doesn't answer, so after a while Clint ventures, "Why the bow?"

"For other things, clearly," Loki snorts, sounding genuinely amused. Clint hates being his entertainment, but at least it's not claustrophobic or painful, following him over the thick, soft layer of dry leaves and listening for noise other than birdsong. It's almost soothing, and the longer Loki walks on without paying him any attention other than what Clint draws with his own remarks, the more he relaxes.

Which is stupid, but it's hard to stay on high alert, for hours and right after an Avenger shindig, so when they step out of the trees and into a clearing with a wide pond, waterfall and everything, Clint scoffs and says, "Nice backdrop. Too bad I kissed you already, huh?"

He's not sure Loki gets his meaning, at first. If he knows what Clint's mocking, or if he has the same ideas about the pretty, picturesque setting, but the dry smile he offers a second later means that he either does, or has made a fairly accurate guess. "You can always ask me to try again, Hawkeye."

Clint ignores it and moves out around the edge of the pond, careful on the slick rocks and moving slowly so he can keep the bow ready in his hands. 

"We swam here as boys," Loki says.

"I didn't ask for a tour of your childhood."

"I'd read over there, with mother," Loki goes on, as if Clint hadn't rebuffed him, pointing to a large rock that stuck out into the water. "Thor would hunt."

"And then you drowned some other child," Clint guesses, not looking. "Or were caught torturing small animals."

"Take off your cloak."

"Oh god. That's why we're here, isn't it? To re-enact your first murder." 

Clint does it, though. Setting his bow and quiver down carefully, a safe distance away from the water, then struggles out of the soft fabric. He's not sure how it's fastened, so it takes a minute or so of pulling and wrestling until he works out where the straps are, fails to undo them, and ends up yanking the whole thing off over his head, then working his arms free. It's undignified. Clint's pretty sure Loki meant it to be, because he's watching with a bemused smile. 

"Boots," he says, when Clint's thrown the cloak down in a tangled heap.

"If you mean strip, just fucking say that," Clint snaps, but he kicks off his boots. Not too hard, so he can find them back in case he needs them later.

"Shirt."

Clint glares and gets out of his pants instead, in pathetic rebellion, but also because the wraps holding his sleeves look like a pain to unravel. He's not even sure where to start, with the end tucked neatly in somewhere, and invisible.

"Well," Loki says. "That's eager."

"Like you weren't going to say that next."

"Maybe. Maybe not." Loki gestures, waving him close. "Come here."

Clint does, picking his way carefully, small pebbles sharp under his bare feet until he gets to the larger rocks at the pool's side, where the stone is sun-warmed and almost uncomfortably hot. He offers his arms when Loki holds a hand out and stays still while the wraps are unwound, the pattern carefully unbraided by Loki's practiced fingers. Like he's done the same for someone else, a hundred times before. Clint doesn't comment or ask about it, just shrugs the shirt off before Loki can order him to, and stands there, fucking naked in a magic forest.

"Jump in," Loki tells him, nodding at the pool. "I want to show you something."


	13. Chapter 13

What Loki wants to show him is a hot spring, feeding directly into the bottom of the pond, the hot water rising, so that plunging into the pond is a shocking transition to unexpected warmth, then shocking cold, and Clint comes back to the surface thrashing water everywhere, breathless with surprise.

"What were you expecting?" Loki asks, when Clint's settled to treading water, stretching downwards with his feet to touch the icy layer below. "A serpent?"

"Sure. Or snapping turtles." Or something else in the range of unpleasant to deadly. Maybe for Loki to force him under and hold him there until he's weak and gasping. Half drowned and helpless, like he'd been with the wine. Instead, Loki directs him around the pond, pointing out rocks to rest on and the schools of small fish darting around far below, sides flashing metallic rainbow colors in the clear water, then going dark when Clint dives for them, disappearing into shadow. The water is so clear, that even though the pond turns out to be deeper than he'd expected, Clint can see every detail on its floor, up until the water filled hole takes a corkscrew turn and disappears into darkness.

Cave system, Clint guesses. Bruce would love it. Bruce would probably be able to explain the likely geology, and the origin of the fine pebbles that cover the pond floor, grainy and crunching gently under Clint's feet if he sets down in the shallows. It's easy to imagine a young Thor playing here, diving and chasing fish. Harder to imagine Loki doing anything that isn't being a shit.

"I bet you complained," Clint says, cool water swirling around his toes. "The whole time." He kicks off across the pool, putting distance between himself and Loki, then rolls to his back to float, head and shoulders breaking the surface, water muting his hearing. Away from the mouth of the spring, the water is cooler. The perfect temperature to ignore. It's like he's floating on air, clouds--real, believable ones this time--visible above through the break in the trees created by the pond. Small birds flit across it, braving the open space to dive for fish or get a drink.

" _Thor_ complained," Loki laughs. He's sitting on the rock he'd pointed out, where he used to read, working at his boots. Carefully picking at the laces and unwinding them from around his ankles. Clint spares him a look, then goes back to watching the birds. They seem indifferent to his presence, breaking the surface of the water with small splashes as if he wasn't there, smooth as any diver, then coming noisily back up through the surface of the water, wings thrashing and spraying droplets all around them until they manage to regain flight.

"Too quiet, too boring," Loki goes on, setting his boot aside and getting to work on the other. "Nothing to wrestle to the ground."

"There was you," Clint offers snidely, but Loki ignores it, caught up in tucking his laces tidily inside his boots. His cloak is already off, folded into a neat pile of green and leaving him in his dark shirt and pants, simply cut, with some pattern in a light thread barely visible at the throat and cuffs of the shirt, twining decoratively around eyelets where the laces have been pulled out and lost.

"There was me," Loki agrees, after he's let Clint float a while longer. "And there was Sif, sometimes."

"And all the little rascals?"

Loki slides out of his pants and folds them, and, with his shirt still on, slides off the rock and into the water, fabric billowing weightlessly around him as he moves slowly out into deeper water, careful not to get his hair wet.

Clint scoffs at that, still floating on his back, letting the sun fall on his face and feeling the occasional fish nibble at his feet, if he lets them trail below him and hits a cold spot. A sudden swirl of cool water where the current changes. It's funny to have that much movement in what seems to be a contained pond. Maybe there's some underground river, Clint thinks, coming up through the caves to break through the forest floor and create this almost-still resting spot.

Clint takes a breath, and his chest floats a bit higher, nipples peaking in the cooler air until he exhales and his body sinks back under the surface. He's sure Loki's watching him. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't aware of the quiet splash of Loki moving around, doing fuck knew what. Maybe skewering tiny fish, or hunting birds like an honest to god fairytale monster.

"What's so amusing?" Loki asks, when Clint chuckles at the mental image.

"It's nice here. Not as lurky as I would have expected." He's still playing the rising-sinking game. Feeling lazy and almost like he could fall asleep if he didn't have to worry about accidentally drowning himself.

"The Realms are beautiful. And closed to me forever."

It's dramatic. Clint huffs and lets himself sink until just his face and wrists are breaking the surface of the pond, hands moving only as much as he needs to stay afloat. At least Loki's self-pity isn't taking the form of planetary invasion this time, but then, if the place belongs to Asgard, maybe it's already as good as invaded.

"Who lives here?" 

Loki moves, a long splash that sounds like he might be swimming in a more active way than Clint. "Here? Hinds. Of a sort. Some burrowing animals."

"No people?"

"Groundskeepers. Well. Gamekeepers, would be more accurate, perhaps."

It's a park. A fucking jungle park. Clint had known Asgard's influence in theory, but the scale of it is impressive. And moreso if he considers the very real possibility that they're not even _on_ Asgard. That this is some entirely different world than the one where Loki's abandoned, silent castle had theoretically stood.

"But _here_ ," Loki continues, meaning the dream. "Here, there's just us. And the birds."

And the fish, Clint doesn't add, kicking as something tickles his foot, chasing it away so he can float in peace. It's nice that Loki lets him, leaving him alone so long that Clint can almost imagine he is alone, if it weren't for the part of him that's sharply tuned to Loki's presence, tracking his movement, and way the sound of him disturbing the pond floor travels through the water.

Eventually, Clint makes his way back towards the shore where his clothes are, body heavy when he has to bear his own weight again. He feels sluggish, like his muscles are slow to respond, and Loki laughs a little at the sight of him, then gestures him closer.

"What?" Clint asks, tilting his head and poking at his ear, sure he's got water in it. "D'you mind if I get my pants?"

"It's too soon to leave, Hawkeye. I've put so much effort into getting us here."

"Maybe you shouldn't have bothered."

Loki doesn't respond, and after some hesitation, Clint wades over, then slips on the shifting sand and splashes back in up to his shoulders, to the sound of Loki's laughter.

"Careful, Hawkeye." He sounds almost fond, his eyes soft. Clint scowls at it, but swims over in a lazy dog paddle, standing again when he's within arm's reach of Loki, where the water is deep enough that he's barely keeping his footing on the pond floor.

"A little closer and you can stand," Loki tells him, smiling as Clint kicks, somewhere between trying to get purchase and trying to float. "Here." He pulls Clint over with a hand on his arm, tugging him to where larger rocks break through the sandy floor, close to the bank, stacking up as they leave the water into a kind of wall behind Loki. There's small plants growing out of it, delicate ferns and shoots Clint can't identify pushing through the gaps between the stones. A sparse coverage, and not the damp mossy surface he'd have expected, with the warm water and with being in the middle of a forest. Mostly, the stone is clean and dry except for where Loki's touched it, his hands and shirt leaving dark, wet marks.

Even in the warm water, Loki's skin is cool. Pleasant. Clint must be overheated to even think it, but when Loki gives him another tug, he lets himself drift closer, and lets Loki shift his grip, hands sliding down Clint's body to hold him by the hips, keeping him from slipping on the smooth rock beneath his feet, helping him find the footholds. It's a familiar grip. Intimate and friendly, and Loki's face is flushed from the heat in a way that Clint's never seen, his expression open and almost happy. He's got some fucking lashes on him, and Clint had never noticed that before. Might, actually, never have been so close to Loki's face before. At least, not in a calm and well-lit situation where he had time to look and to think and to register details like how bright Loki's eyes are, and the way his mouth softens when he's relaxed. 

Clint pushes an arm through the water, propelling himself forward a little, pushing against Loki's hands until he relents and Clint can swim-walk a little closer. It's an odd situation, vulnerable and private at the same time, the woods thick and empty around them, but the sky clear and blue overhead, with nothing to disturb them but the sound of the wind and the water and their own breathing. 

Clint sighs and leans in, until he can feel Loki's lips under his own, parting to let Clint's tongue in, allowing more than reciprocating. His shirt is soaked and heavy under Clint's fingers as he tries to grab on and pull himself closer, then hooks a leg round Loki's instead, until Loki lets him close the distance and Clint can press close and moan quietly into Loki's mouth, then squirm at the feel of fingers along his sides, ticklish as the fish in the cooler water below, making Clint laugh, then hum, then sigh as the touch turns firmer and stops teasing. Loki's palm flattening against his ribs to stroke in soothing, calming motions, before moving to hold him by the hips again, pushing him back a little before the touch slides even lower, to his thighs and then around to the insides of his legs, not really nudging them apart, but Clint moves to make space anyway, pulling on Loki's shirt to give himself leverage, so he can deepen the kiss as he does it, making low sounds into Loki's mouth. It's slow and lazy, but desperate at the same time. Clint's half hard, and rolling his hips, with nothing to move against but the water until Loki's fingers trail up the inside of his thigh, along the edge of a muscle, up into the crease of a leg, then following the soft skin at the joint back towards Clint's balls, just the back of one finger brushing the side of his cock, making Clint thrust helplessly and make complaining noises, mouth open against Loki's.

Loki's fingers come to a stop, pressing gently behind Clint's nuts, then linger indecisively until Clint moans again, and then they're at his hole, not entering, but just stroking, brushing over the sensitive skin until Clint nearly bites Loki's lip in impatience and rocks back himself, until he realizes he's drifted enough in the water that he can rub off against Loki's hip, naked and clinging to Loki like a frog, one leg up with his foot hooked behind Loki’s knee again. Opening his body up in the hope that Loki will push his fingers in, and help him the fuck out, and not make him fucking beg for it. The water's too warm and almost suffocating and Clint's not sure he'd have the breath for it anyway, or for anything but rocking against Loki and hanging on and making choked-back noises. He's probably loud enough that his voice is traveling a fair distance through the forest, considering how quiet it is. 

He manages to get his arms wrapped around Loki's neck, and to quiet himself to soft sighs and stuttered panting, kissing the side of Loki's face when he breaks out of the kiss, hips squirming until Loki's fingers finally push inside him, just deep enough to counter the overheated daze with bright pain. 

Clint tosses his head back and lets his mouth fall open, and then something falls in the forest, with a heavy, echoing thump, followed by another and then another, and Clint scrambles, trying to get free and make distance and get somewhere he can put some solid ground under his feet and be ready to move, but for a long moment, everything hangs and he can't seem to get coordinated enough to get his arms loose from Loki's neck, or pull free from the invasion of his fingers, or swim out and away from the rock wall. He's stuck there, with his back arching and a shout half formed in his throat, and the booming is getting closer, and then harsh light falls across his face and something hard and heavy strikes the back of his hand, and finally the shout breaks free and Clint can move, kicking and fighting until he registers someone saying, "Clint?" over and over and louder each time.

"Uh."

His heart is thumping. It's the best response he can manage, even as his vision clears and he makes out the bright edge of an open door and a figure standing backlit in it, and then recognize that it's Steve, with his hand pushing the door open and unhappy concern on his face. "We need you," he says. "Quinjet in five."

"Yeah. Okay. Sure. I just--"

"Are you okay?" It's not an idle question. Steve sounds very much like he thinks Clint might not be, and also like he's not pleased about having to invite Clint along. Maybe like he thinks Clint could as easily be a hindrance instead of an asset.

"Fine. I was--"

"Sleeping. I know. Tony wanted to call a search and rescue when no one knew where you were."

Clint swallows. His hand hurts, where he's banged it on the wall. "Sorry. Had to get away from all the robot talk. I only meant to take a few minutes."

"You had a few hours," Steve points out, but not like he's criticizing. More like he thinks Clint might have taken a head injury or gotten himself poisoned, but can't prove it.

"Shit."

Steve doesn't answer, but he stays a bit longer than Clint thinks he'd probably been planning to, just frowning and watching Clint figure his limbs out, and then he says, "Next time let someone know where you are. You have three minutes. If you're not there, we'll make do without you."

That sounds like a threat more than an offer to defer to Clint's judgement, but Clint knows that's how it's meant, just with Steve in _we have three minutes_ mode. "I'm fine," Clint repeats. "I'll be there. Who wants to miss a robot bug fight?"

\-----

Three minutes is just enough time to wash his face, slap himself the rest of the way awake and grab his stuff, then haul ass to the hangar. It's a mercifully tight deadline, and as soon as he makes it to the jet, Tony is slinging an arm over his shoulders and saying, "Hawkeye. Glad the wolves didn't get you after all. Romanov was about to issue an Amber Alert."

"What's new on the bugs?" Clint asks, and that gets Tony to switch gears and keep them both busy with the update until they're on board and Steve is shifting the discussion to tactics and plans, and for once Clint just wants him to keep talking. Keep offering options to consider and pick apart and run through and keep Clint's mind busy, because he's vaguely aware that any slowdown will be an opening for him to think about Loki or about what's going on in his own brain, or remember the too-real feeling of Loki's hands on him, and his bare skin pressing against Loki's clothed body, and the more disturbing memory of having wanted it and initiated it, like he'd forgotten who Loki was, or maybe like Loki had temporarily been someone entirely different.

Or maybe like Clint had been.

"Drop Hawkeye off," Steve's saying, "and keep an eye on the distance. We know they're jumpers." 

Clint drags his attention back to the plan, as Tony plots out the trajectory of possible shots against bug range without him. "Put me anywhere," Clint tells him. "You know I can make the shot."

"That's nice, Auto-fire, but I also don't want to scrape you off a roof later. Or off bug under belly. Maybe next time, when I remember to bring a squidgy?"

"Fine. Just don't whine at me when you want someone shot in the eye."

"I have a whole list of someones I want shot in the eye, and you haven't done a thing about it so far. Not to look your business as usual in the mouth or anything."

"Close in, Tony," Clint insists, because even though Tony and Steve are probably right about keeping out of range, staying clear will also mean enough time for quiet and thought and all the things Clint really doesn't want to have any fucking time for. "You put me on a roof in the middle of nowhere, and I'll fucking kill you."


	14. Chapter 14

Tony doesn't put him down in the thick of it, but he doesn't leave Clint way out at the limit of his range either. It's a hell of a time for Tony to learn the art of compromise, because Clint doesn't get jumped, but he does end up with long gaps in the action, where all he can do is wait impatiently and harass the others on comms to distract himself from the way his gut's been churning ever since he woke up, unsettled like he'd really spent time in a glorified forest hot tub, and really let Loki touch him. Like he'd really touched Loki, unprompted and of his own volition, everything Loki had done, to him and to the others and to Coulson, distant and irrelevant.

"I'm coming in," Clint tells the comms, because if he doesn't have something else to focus on, he's sure he's going to start tasting Loki in his mouth. Maybe get that almost-sensation feeling that's been dogging him, brushing his skin like a caress or echoing the tickle of water droplets trailing down his neck. "Give me the go-ahead, Cap. I'm feeling left out here."

Steve sends back a negative, and Clint breaks position for a second to pace the roof, looking for a better angle to see if he can get a bead on something, but his sight lines are obstructed, and he ends up setting back up in the spot he'd left, biting the inside of his cheek to banish other, less real, less immediate sensations. Focusing on the pain until he can put most of his attention back on the shot. Concentrate. Breathe in, breathe out, be still, wait, wait, wait. It takes forever for the fight to move back in his direction, and Clint is grateful when it does, and when there's enough chaos around him and the others that there's no way Steve can keep him out of it without a damn good excuse.

Clint's not about to hand him one. If Steve's looking to can him, he's going to have to try a lot harder than just sitting back and waiting for Clint to shoot himself in the foot. Figuratively speaking.

"Cover fire," Clint says into his comm, to warn the others, before he sends a volley of arrows close over them, into robot bug-belly, catching them in mid-jump. "Thanks. You're welcome. No problem."

Steve huffs, part of the sound getting lost through the mic. It would be incomprehensible if Clint didn't know that sound pretty well by now. "Nice shot, Hawkeye."

"No problem." He gets another three arrows ready, then makes for the edge of the roof, hopping over it to land noisily on the fire escape, then clattering down two levels to get a better view of the street. "Shooting over you. Watch your heads."

It's a good fight, with debris coming at him, and things exploding close enough to keep his heart hammering, and all his attention on the street and his teammates and the handful of SHIELD agents who've started moving in to clear and secure the area. If it was up to Clint, it wouldn't wind down. Not until he was too tired to keep the adrenaline pounding, and then, ideally, it would end quickly and cleanly, with no debrief after, and he could crash instantly into dreamless sleep and have the peace continue until at least the early morning.

"Nice work," Steve tells him, when instead, the fight winds down into grinding skirmishes, interspersed with more waiting and searching for hiding bug-bots, and then for a SHIELD agent someone's misplaced, followed by a lecture that Clint doesn't get the purpose of. They're just standing around in the street, which is a way a lot of their fights seem to end, processing the post-battle slump and at loose ends while SHIELD makes itself busy gathering up bug bits. 

"Maybe next time you'll let me play from the get-go," Clint snips, not realizing how short tempered he is until he hears the words come out of his mouth, clipped and pissy. If Steve notices, he doesn't let it show.

"Have to have a fall back point," he says, and claps Clint on the shoulder, letting his hand rest there briefly before he lets it fall away. 

"Right. Next time it's Hulk's turn."

Steve doesn't respond to that, or try to volunteer Tony or Thor instead, but turns his attention to the agent walking over, who's probably planning to drag them all back to SHIELD and into an interview room.

"Should have let the damn bugs pincher off my head," Clint grumbles, watching her approach. Steve ignores that, too.

\-----

It turns out that SHIELD's having a particularly bureaucratic day, long in the asking up the chain of command department, and frustratingly short in the efficiency one, which means it takes forever for someone to show up to tell someone to ask someone else if they know who to ask to see if any of them can go home yet. Somewhere in the middle of it, Tony decides that everyone knows where to find him if they need him, and wanders towards the bathroom, to never re-appear. Clint would like to copy the move, but he's still technically a SHIELD agent, with orders and superiors he has to answer to and everything, and if Steve wants to bench him, the last thing he needs is to give Fury or Coulson any reason to back him up, even if it means the minutes drag by, with nothing to focus on but the way something in the seam of his vest is scratching.

Clint takes a breath and lets it out again. Tries not to think about anything having to do with touch or friction or how anything feels against his skin. The collar of his vest is damp. He's sweated enough that the air conditioned room they've been left to wait in is chilly. It feels gross.

"Do you think Nat's coming back anytime soon?" he asks, and gestures widely to indicate SHIELD in general. "Or do you think they misfiled her somewhere too?"

Steve's lip twitches. "I think she'll find her way back."

Clint huffs and kicks his chair back, tipping it onto it's back feet and hooking his knee under the edge of the table to keep from overbalancing. "I think you're underestimating just how much this place can screw up."

"Natasha's fine. Is this about something?"

Clint gestures again, incredulous. They've been here for _hours_. He can't stand the way Steve's standing it, or the tick of the clock hung at the back of the room, or the quiet of the hallway outside. "I can't believe we're the only ones stuck here."

"We're the one on SHIELD's payroll," Steve points out.

"I'm going to quit and work for Tony."

Steve considers that for maybe a second, before he decides it's a joke and laughs agreeably. 

"Or Thor," Clint adds. "I'll move to fucking Asgard."

He twitches as soon as he says and has to grab at the table to catch himself and regain his balance. "To--you know--shoot boar or something. Be a magic park ranger."

He's thinking of Loki's stupid dining hall and space food. The memory of it flooding back, as vivid as if it had been real, and followed quickly with the sense-memory of hot water at this chest and cold at his feet and where Loki's hands had touched him. Clint tips forward suddenly, chair thumping back to all four feet, then squeaking against the floor as he pushes it back to stand and pace across the room and back and then away again, to thump his head gently against the wall. 

"Clint?"

"Fine. I'm fine. I just--this is--is someone coming to take our reports or what?"

"We'll give it five more minutes."

"You're patient for a guy who's spent ninety years on ice, you know that?"

It's Tony levels of tactless. Clint shuts his mouth with a click and turns away, like that will cover the slip, then decides that's an idiotic move and turns around again. "Steve--"

"I was asleep," Steve says. "It felt like a minute."

 _A lifetime in a dream_ , Clint thinks, but swallows it back, suddenly claustrophobic. The windows have blinds over them, but if he goes to open them, he'll probably end up tearing them down. Instead he stalks to the door, to stick his head out into the hall. 

"No one's coming," he reports back to Steve. "I bet they forgot all about us. One time me and Nat got left on a landing strip for eight hours before someone realized a key part of their op was missing."

"Sounds familiar."

Clint offers him a grin, appreciating the offer of camaraderie, but he'd still like to crawl out of his skin and maybe find someplace out in the open where he can see sky and hear airplanes and traffic. "Come on, Rogers. Let's make a break for it. What are they going to do? Fire you?"

"Well," Steve says, "If you put it that way--"

"Great," Clint says. "Do you have a pen? I'll leave a note."

\-----

He doesn't realize how tired he is until they're in the elevator, heading up to the living quarters in the tower, watching the floor number light up then darken, faster than it feels like they're moving. It still takes an obnoxiously long time for the doors to open and release them into the short hall leading to the common area Clint likes to think of as the living room, where the TV is and where everyone's left their personal junk to clutter up surfaces.

"Home sweet mess," Clint says, adding to it by dropping his bag next to the couch and leaving it there to deal with later. He takes a minute to head to the kitchen to rummage through the fridge, then heads out to the roof with a beer and some leftovers that are probably still fine to eat, then sinks down on the pool loungers Tony had set up there, for some indiscernible Tony reason.

He half-expects Steve to follow him out there, because he's sure Steve's been trying to talk to him ever since he'd had to find and wake Clint to go bug hunting, but when a shadow falls over him, he looks up to find Loki standing there, casual as anything on Tony's roof-top picnic space, and Clint has no idea why, but he doesn't even try to get up to push him over the edge.

"Fuck off," he says instead, tired to the point of indifference. "Leave me alone."

Loki makes an exasperated noise and settles himself on the other lounger, stretching his legs out, crossed at the ankle, then smoothes his hands over his long coat, adjusting the heavy folds. It's a dark green this time, embroidered with gold and edged in black. It looks quilted and thick, which reminds Clint that he'd stuffed his vest into his gear bag. It's chilly on the roof, in the wind and wearing just a t-shirt. He had a sweater in his bag. He should have pulled it on before coming out here. 

"You don't _like_ being alone," Loki reminds him, and plucks Clint's beer out of his hand, holding it prissily by the neck of the bottle with just his fingers, like wants to make as little contact with the glass as possible. 

Clint watches him take an experimental sip, then asks, "Am I asleep now?"

"Do you think you're asleep now?"

"I can't tell. That's the point, isn't it?"

¬Loki makes a non-committal sound and takes another sip, not making the show of disgust that Clint had expected. He looks incongruous there, in his Asgardian clothing and taking careful, dainty sips, while he watches jets track across the New York sky. Casual like he's a part of Clint's regular life. 

"Get out of my head." 

He turns, getting his feet back on the floor, in case he has to move, but Loki just gives him a dismissive sideways look, then stretches his neck until it clicks, and sighs comfortably. "A nice view," he says, like a normal guest and as if Clint hadn't spoken. "You can see so far." A smile. "You especially, I suppose."

"And get off my roof."

"How unwelcoming, Hawkeye. I thought you enjoyed my company." It's sly. A reference to their trip through the forest and to the pond, and the things Clint had done there. The memory makes his stomach lurch and his heart thump. His head feels light. He's breathing too fast.

"Get off my roof," Clint repeats, louder, suppressed panic turning the demand into a plea. 

Loki laughs and takes another swig of beer. Clint would love to beat the shit out of him, then maybe throw him off the end of Tony's launch ramp, but he stays where he is, hands white knuckled around the edge of the lounger, aware of his fury in a way that he hadn't been in the forest, but just as helpless to do anything about it.

"What did you do to me?" he demands.

"What did _I_ do?"

"You--" Clint takes a quick breath. "You--I didn't--"

"As I remember it, you very much did." Loki's smirking against the rim of the bottle, the edge of it pressing against his bottom lip. Clint flicks his gaze away and shuts his mouth with a click. Grinds his jaw until a tooth squeaks and the sensation makes him flinch.

"Free will is a privilege," Loki tells him, before Clint can accuse him of controlling the dream. "You can't deny I offered you choice."

"Like hell."

"And you chose to disobey."

"So," Clint says. "That was your idea of retribution."

Loki lifts the beer bottle and tips it towards him in a kind of acknowledging toast. "Or you can choose to see it as a lesson."

Clint doesn't answer, and a moment later he's sitting on Tony's roof, glaring at nothing, with every muscle tense and aching, from the back of his head all the way down his spine.


	15. Chapter 15

It only takes two days for Clint to start missing the bug-bots. After that, the downtime starts getting to him. Back in his regular SHIELD days, someone would have loaded him up with drudgework and training by now and that would at least have kept him busy. As an Avenger, he's got some options--paperwork or the shooting range being at the top of the list--but he's also left to his own devices, and his devices rely a lot on personal motivation levels that have pretty much tanked. The only highpoint of the week is that Natasha comes back, looking tired and grungy and with her hair tied back in a practical way that meant there'd been a lack of showers in the field and she just wanted everything out of her way.

"And I thought I looked disgusting," she comments, when she finds Clint sitting at the kitchen counter in a loose henley and his boxers, nursing a third or fourth cup of coffee at something-past-noon. "What's been going on around here?"

"A lot of nothing," Clint says. Then adds, "And robots."

"And parties?"

"The robots were kind of a party. I was great, by the way. You missed the whole thing."

"At least I still get to witness your hangover," Natasha comments, pausing to poke him in the cheek. Clint snorts and scrubs at the spot, his hand rasping over stubble. He stops when he notices Natasha starting to look worried. "Is someone hurt?” she asks.

"No. Everything's great. I might be having a life crisis, but other than that--" Clint shrugs. Scratches his face again. He should shave. Or shower. Or go back to bed, except then he'd fall asleep and have fucked up dreams. Or he could drug himself to sleep, have no dreams, and then have even worse dreams the next time around, if he drops off without meds. He's not as good as Tony at a coffee-fueled, insomniac lifestyle, but it's working. To a point.

"What else is new?" Natasha asks with a snort, but when Clint glances at her, she still looks more concerned than like she's having fun with him. 

"Haha," Clint grumbles at her, and rests his face in his hand. He feels bleary. He can practically feel the shadows growing under his eyes.

"Where are the others?"

Clint shrugs. "Tony and Bruce are at SHIELD, playing with parts. Steve and Thor are around." Somewhere. Clint's pretty sure.

Natasha considers that for a minute, eyeing him with a little frown on her face before she decides that she's done with the interrogation for now, and steals his coffee, polishing it off before she sets the mug back down in front of him. "I'm taking a shower. Don't even think about making a fresh pot."

"Why are you doing this?" Clint asks, pushing the empty mug away. "I thought you loved me."

"And make some food. You look like hell and I'm starving."

\-----

Natasha reappears to pack noodles away like SHIELD had been starving her. It's nice to have her back, even if she definitely notices that Clint only pokes at his lunch, fishing out meatballs and melted cheese from both their plates, but not really touching the rest of it. His stomach feels sour from too much coffee and too little sleep, and even the thought of filling it with actual food is nauseating.

"This is like when we thought Coulson was dead," Natasha comments, refilling her plate from his, when he continues to just shove his meal around. She twists pasta around her fork, shoves it into her mouth, then says around it, "You kind of _smell_ like when we thought Coulson was dead."

Saying it in an offhand mumble does nothing to soften it. Natasha's got to know he doesn't--and won't ever--appreciate the reminder, but she ignores his reaction, continuing to eat even when Clint starts, then shoots her a hard look. "No one's making you sit here," he snaps, when she doesn't turn to look at him.

"Mm." It's noncommittal. Not agreement, but just acknowledgement. "Is that was this is about?"

"Coulson's not dead, it turns out. So no."

Natasha shrugs one shoulder, gathering noodles onto her fork. "Things come back."

Clint makes an annoyed sound and scrubs his hands over his face, but doesn't answer.

"Maybe you should report this."

"Yeah? And maybe you should remember what SHIELD does when they think you can't be trusted." It's low. Of course Natasha remembers. Clint plunges ahead anyway. "You and Steve are really itching to turn me in, huh?"

"Don't be stupid."

"There's nothing to report."

"Clint--"

"I can't sleep. That doesn't make me a potential double agent."

Natasha looks surprised, then her expression settles into pleasant neutrality. She reminds him a lot of Coulson when she does that. Bland and nice and waiting for a mark to put a foot wrong. Clint doesn't look at her. Just picks up his plate and dumps it in the sink, silverware and leftover food and all. Natasha doesn't even twitch at the clatter.

"I'm glad you're back," Clint tells her. "But I'm going to go downstairs and shoot some things."

Natasha lifts her fork the way Tony might tip a scotch glass. "It's good to be home."

\-----

Clint does head down to the range, but his temper-driven enthusiasm doesn't last long. He's only partway into the session before he's out of steam and considering the hassle of packing up, sourly regretful that he'd set up to start with. Natasha hadn't followed him, at least, and wherever Steve had gotten off to, it wasn't to the adjoining gym, which meant the floor was quiet, apart from the whirr of mechanized targets and the soft hum of the air conditioning.

It's peaceful, then oppressive. Something clicks in the ceiling every so often, and even though Clint knows it's nothing but JARVIS-operated maintenance bots, he jumps every time, expecting Loki, expecting the shadows to crawl, expecting to be transported someplace else all of a sudden. It doesn't do much for his practice, and as soon as something gives him the excuse to call it quits, Clint does, putting off any clean up and maintenance that doesn't require immediate attention.

Natasha's gone when he makes his way back through the kitchen, probably gone off to deal with her gear and catch a nap. That last sounds good. And awful. The memory of Loki's touch has gone from cool to clammy in Clint's imagination. A memory that makes him cringe and his skin come up in goosebumps, and makes him duck away from Thor, later that night.

"Are you unwell?" Thor asks, hand still hanging in the air between them, like he's not sure what to do with the aborted gesture. If he should just drop it or change it into something else.

"Why? Have you been talking to Nat?"

Thor glances away, at one of the others, looking the way he does when he thinks he's missed something, and then says, "No?" in an unsure tone. Clint's not sure if it's a question or a prompt.

"Never mind," he says. "I'm fine."

"Have I offended--"

"I'm not offended. It's fine. It's nothing."

"If you require assistance, I can--"

"I don't require assistance. I'm _fine_. Everything is fine. Everything's great. It's all fucking fantastic. Alright?" 

"Alright," Thor agrees, careful and low voiced. Clint fights the urge to drag his hands over his face.

Thor offers him a smile. The goofy, weird one he uses when he's trying to be agreeable to Earthlings, which doesn't do much for Clint's frustration, to be dealt with the way Thor might a scared waitress. Clint huffs, then lifts his hands and lets them drop in a helpless gesture. "Okay. Fine. You win. Go ahead. Crawl up my ass with the rest of the team."

"I'll give you your peace," Thor says, with restrained testiness. It's the last thing Clint wants, really, but after biting his head off, Clint can't exactly follow Thor back to the others.

\-----

"My brother isn't used to rejection," is Loki's opinion, when he shows up in the field Clint's standing in, pretty sure that he's waiting for a helicopter, but not sure why he needs the extraction. He's dressed in his SHIELD gear, but with his regular jacket thrown over it, so it's not entirely clear if he's on a mission or not. He's considering his lack of weaponry and what that means, while Loki walks over with his hands in his pockets. Strolling through the hip-height grass so casually it might as well be someone's lawn. Clint watches him through the corner of his eye, not looking away from the blank white of the sky, still kind of half-hoping for a chopper or a quinjet or Tony in his suit.

"It's a shock to the system," Loki goes on, coming up next to Clint and tilting his head back to follow Clint's gaze. "For him."

"Are you watching me?" It's not even an accusation. Of course Loki is watching him. That, or catching up on rewind, pulling out the contents of Clint's mind so he can offer commentary. An interrogation that Clint doesn't even feel and can't resist, more invasive in its own way than even the questioning Loki had put him to under the influence of the staff. 

"Listening," Loki corrects. "In a sense. Come with me."

"Why? Do you want to take another walk down memory lane? Play This Is Your Asgardian Life?"

Loki smiles, almost wistful. "I _had_ an Asgardian life. I was a prince among their golden towers." His tone changes on that last, turning dry.

"If I had a golden tower, I'd resent it too," Clint agrees.

"Don't be smart." 

Loki turns away, clearly expecting Clint to follow, then stops and turns back impatiently when Clint doesn't.

"I think I'm on a mission," Clint explains, unsure, and also unwilling to follow Loki into the trees that border the field.

"And who do you think is coming?" Loki sounds amused. "Your friends? The monster?"

"Don't call him that."

"He is," Loki says. "And more a monster than me. A wholly unnatural creation."

Clint heaves a breath, temper rising.

"Why are you angry? It's only the truth."

"Don't talk about them."

"Why? Because they're yours?" Loki smiles unpleasantly. The wind picks up, rustling the grass and lifting the ends of his hair, where a hint of color flickers, too bright to be caused by the watery sunlight.

"And don't wear their faces."

Loki does it anyway, turning into Natasha. Red flowing up from the ends of his hair, before the transformation spills down his face and over his body, leaving him shorter and changing his loose, woven shirt into Natasha's fitted black mission outfit. "But isn't this a face you enjoy dreaming about?" he asks, his voice smooth and low. Like Natasha playing a seductress. "I wager you dream about so much more with her."

"Stop it."

"It's just a dream, Hawkeye. She would never need to know."

"No."

Loki smiles with Natasha's face. "Then you'd better come when you're called."

Clint hesitates, turning to look back at the sky, and Loki laughs. "No one is coming, Clint," Natasha's voice says, gently rebuking. "We're on our own."

It's a real memory. From early on, when he'd only been working with Natasha for a short time, and she'd been sure Coulson would leave them while Clint had wanted to wait, sure of the opposite. He recognizes the field now, deja vu hitting like a ton of bricks, even with the ways Loki is mis-playing Natasha. Making her warmer and more provocative than she'd been. 

"You went through my head," he concludes, anger peaking and turning almost instantly to exhaustion.

"Not quite."

Clint doesn't look at him. "I was right that time," he says. Even to his own ears, his voice sounds hollow. "SHIELD came for us."

"How nice of them," Loki says. "This time I've come."

\-----

They stay in the mission. Or in _a_ mission, at least, made up of disjointed pieces of memory and formed into something not-quite coherent. There's a ruined tank Clint had hidden behind, finding shade with Coulson and ribbing him about being overdressed for the occasion, long before Natasha had even been on his radar, and then a burnt-out, bullet riddled home he'd stopped for shelter in from long after she'd joined them. They're too close together here, in time and in space, like they belonged to the same day, the same event, instead of being years and miles apart. Unlike the locations Loki had brought him to, there's people here. Dusty, barefoot kids who run past them like they're invisible, couples arguing out of sight somewhere, their voices drifting into the street, and dispirited vendors waiting behind weathered, bare stands. Armed men in uniforms stand at the street corners, bored and weary, cradling guns. Clint's not sure whose side they're on, or if there are sides. They're generic enough that they could easily be part of the landscape and nothing more meaningful than that. Like the kids, they don't pay Clint or Loki any attention, looking right through them as they scan the streets from behind dark glasses.

"Well," Loki says, still wearing Natasha. "What a nice place to visit."

"Shut up."

Natasha laughs. Light and genuine, like Clint's said something charming, and like they aren't clearly in a war zone. She looks around curiously, treating it like an amusement park approximation or a movie set. Like the women hurrying past the soldiers and resolutely avoiding eye contact are just actors or recordings. Unimportant and barely real.

"We could have gone to the far reaches of the known worlds," Loki says. "And watched black holes eat each other." He scans the street, barely sparing a look at Clint. "Try a spectacle with a little scale to it."

"I bet."

A thin dog crosses in front of them, panting and with its tail held low. The final touch to a pathetic scene.

"Have you brought my brother here? To enjoy mortal war?"

Clint's not sure where _here_ is. Can't place it, even though he's seen every individual piece of it before, somewhere else and in isolation. "Thor's not like this," he says. 

"No? Are you so taken in by the gleaming helm and ostentation that you think the war monger prince, son of a war monger king, has devastated nothing?"

"Thor's not like this." Clint repeats, stubborn, and for a moment Loki falls behind, before making an _ah_ sound.

"But _you_ are," he decides, in Natasha's voice, pitching it low and silky, trailing Clint again but not falling back in at his side. "Is this is a place where _you've_ done something?"

"You tell me."

"Did you choose it? Did you enjoy it?"

He's heard that tone in Natasha's voice before. The blurred line between accusation and seduction, like maybe, possibly, she'd understand some mark's confession and maybe even share their feelings, if only they'd come clean.

"Fuck off," Clint says.

"Oh," Natasha-Loki says, like the thought is just striking her. "It was an order. Of course that absolves you entirely."

Loki's going to take him to the Helicarrier, Clint thinks suddenly, his gut twisting. Maybe fight him as Natasha. Make him shoot Fury, or watch Coulson die, first hand this time. "No."

"The same way that everything you've done for me means nothing." There's a deliberate emphasis on _everything_ that makes Clint stop and look at him, not entirely sure what he's getting at. If he's following Clint's train of thought and thinking about the days immediately following Pegasus, or about the more recent things Clint's done, without much more volition.

Loki smiles back, pleasant and friendly and very convincingly Natasha. "Of course you're an innocent," she says, in the same reassuring tone she'd said, _It's not your fault, Clint_ , then gestures, waving her hand to indicate the ravaged little town around them. "Only an innocent would dream of this."

Clint opens his mouth so answer, but then the dream jumps, just a hazy sense of connection to take him and Natasha from the street they'd been in, to a damp room with concrete walls and exposed pipes overhead. There's a bare bulb overhead that could be from any number of places, hanging from a cable that's just tacked to the ceiling. A steel chair with mostly peeled-away paint that Clint remembers starkly from an early mission stands askew on the other side of the room. The remaining paint on it is a bright sea-green. He remembers thinking it might have come from a school, or possibly a hospital. It's that kind of green, either cheerful or institutional.

This time, he's not zip-tied to it, but shackled to the opposite wall, from where he can also see, a flight of wooden the stairs that lead up, hit a landing, turn, then open somewhere above, letting daylight in through what Clint thinks is a security gate, judging by the shadow it's casting and on an old memory of a hasty exit from a similar basement. If he follows that memory, there's nothing but fields outside, icy and barren and a place where he won't get very far without shoes and dressed in a T-shirt.

He hadn't been tied up in his memory of the basement, but helping to storm it. Maybe someone else had been held there. Here. It's hard to recall, the memory losing out to the immediate reality of the situation, where rough concrete is chilling his back and scraping his arms. There's a little fire in a jerry rigged stove, providing just enough warmth to keep them from freezing to death, but Clint's feet ache with cold anyway. Natasha's not doing a damn thing to help, busy peering around with a dubious little frown on her face, the way she might consider Tony's workshop immediately following some disaster. Clint would like to go home, but he's not sure he knows the Avengers yet. If they're likely to come for him or not.

"Tasha?"

"A little dingy isn't it?" Natasha says, disapproving and casual. Like she's commenting on the messiness of Clint's apartment. _Do you ever pick a thing up, Clint?_ One _thing. Try it sometime._

Clint tries to pull free, but he doesn't have a lot of slack and can't get any decent purchase. "This isn't funny."

Natasha casts a cool glance in his direction. "It's less amusing than I'd expected," she agrees. "At least following my brother, you could expect to die beneath the sky."

"Come on, Nat. Get me loose, and let's go home."

"Me? _You_ brought us here."

Clint's not sure that's true. The situation has all the makings of a SHIELD mission, so it's unlikely that Clint had been the final authority on their being there, even if he'd flown them in to wherever they are. He'd thought Russia before, and maybe Natasha's attitude confirms it, because she isn't acting like they're friends yet.

"I think I followed you here," Clint tries. "So don't try to pin this whole thing on me." Natasha has a thick sweater on. Black or dark grey, with a collar that bunches warmly against her neck. Clint would fucking love one of those. Even with the fire, he's freezing his ass off.

"And now you'll try to convince me to join you." Natasha sounds bored. Like she's played through this moment before, and finds it meaningless and dull. Like deciding to come over to SHIELD had no importance. The dismissal stings. 

"Is this one of the dreams where you fail to bring her in and one of you winds up dead?" Natasha asks, still examining the room with a detached sort of curiosity, like she isn't really there. She looks at Clint and smiles. "Do you remember telling me about that?"

Clint doesn't. He half suspects he hadn't, and that Loki's taking the memory straight from his head. "Don't do this. Don't make me kill her." Don't shoot Fury, don't shoot fellow agents, don't crash the Helicarrier.

"You don't seem in a position to offer much threat," he says, with that condescending amusement that is definitely not Natasha, then looks up at the sound of footsteps and voices. The security gate squeaks. "Anyhow, I don't think that's where this is going, Hawkeye."

Clint pulls at the chains again. The guys who come down the stairs are a mash of enemies and allies that his brain is piecing together into a generic threat, with no affiliation of their own. There's no Chitauri mixed in, which is nice, but then, for some reason, that invasion hadn't stuck with Clint the way it had with Tony. Too bizarre to compete with the familiar threat offered by the mundane human goon. 

"It didn't go this way," Clint protests. "We were in an alley. Tasha."

"And I was alone and you were off comms and everyone was sure you were going to be killed, if you weren't dead already," she finishes, ignoring the men who are warming their hands and talking in a language Clint's mind isn't filling in enough to make sense out of. There's two of them. Big, but just guys. The impersonal, faceless kind of threat that could be part of any mission. One of them comes over to ask Clint questions, but he still can't make any meaning out of the words.

"Tasha. Natasha, come on."

"Come to SHIELD," Natasha finishes for him, airy and mocking, taking a seat on the metal chair. 

The guy has his hand on Clint's face. He looks annoyed that Clint's not answering his questions. "It'll be fun," Clint promises past him. 

"I wouldn't want to interfere with whatever you have planned here, Hawkeye."

"I'm not _asking_ you to--fuck." The guy is pushing Clint's head back against the wall, growling into his face. "I don't know." Clint tells him, angry, "I don't even know where we _are_." He tries to kick. It doesn't work very well, and he manages to wrench an arm, struggling like an amateur instead of biding his time until he has a good opening. 

The man smacks him, without heat. Clint sort of remembers that happening, the interrogator just working for an outcome, but he's not sure if he'd witnessed it or been the target. Clint shifts his feet, then jerks when he's hit again. He's a threatening guy, Clint thinks, but professional, more detached than his menacing tone would lead one to think. He doesn't care if Clint answers his questions yet. They're just an excuse to soften him up, to see how much smacking around he's likely to need. If Natasha doesn't do something soon, things are going to suck.

"I don't know anything," Clint repeats, still unsure what the question is, or what they want from him. If they're after the Avengers, or SHIELD, or Clint himself. 

The man lifts Clint's face, cradling it to examine his expression, like he's trying to read Clint for tells, then he hits him again, open handed. An insulting smack that's still hard enough to jerk Clint's head to the side. 

"Fuck," Clint spits. "Come _on_." It's not going to stop. He might not be able to place the basement, but the game is familiar. They're not going to accept any answer until they're sure Clint _wants_ them to believe him. Until wanting them to stop takes over his whole brain.

"I don't know what you want," Clint tells them. "Who the hell are you?" His feet hurt. Not just from the cold, but like he's tried to run and torn them up on rocks and or on a rough road. Or maybe the guys had taken something to them and he doesn't remember. Maybe there's gaps in his memory, the way he doesn't remember big chunks of attacking the Helicarrier. Maybe someone else had been in his head and used him to do things. That could explain why he has no idea what the men want. "It wasn't me."

Natasha laughs. Not in amusement, but a sarcastic bark, short, like it was surprised out of her. Clint can remember her sounding that cynical, once. That suspicious. Remembers her saying _unmade_ by way of explanation. She'd know what the fuck is going on, and why Clint's here, and if it's his fault. 

"What do you _want_ , Tasha?"

The guy hitting him steps away, shedding his coat, getting warm now even though Clint's still freezing. Clint fucking hates him. "What did you do to me?" The other guy is still standing in front of the stove. He's not warming his hands, Clint realizes. He's turning something in the fire, heating it up, and Clint's seen the way _that_ tends to go too, when someone's chained against a wall. "Just take it out of my head, you fuck. You don't have to do this."

Guy Two pulls something long and metal out of the fire, glowing hot yellow-orange at the end. He's suddenly wearing a welding mask, which Clint's sure he hadn't been before. "Tony?" he tries, even though that's nuts. The guy is way too big to be Tony, and Tony hadn't been there anyway, this long ago. Even Natasha's not there, just Loki, with his dark hair gathered at his neck and a dark cloak falling around him, like the broken little chair is a throne.

The first guy is back, running his hand under Clint's shirt, lifting it up and pushing Clint's pants lower, making room for the other to get at bare skin, while Clint glances from one of them to the other, heart pounding and sounds of protest falling out of his mouth, as unformed as their conversation.

And then the room dissolves, leaving just Clint, the chair, the stove, and Loki, standing where one of the guys had been, and holding a ring instead of hot metal. Looking down at it like he's just as surprised as Clint. "Well," he says, holding the ring out to the fire, with just his fingers, letting light bounce off the silver. "This was pleasant."

Clint swallows. He's still held in place and not stupid enough to think that anything is over, but relief floods him anyway, making him feel shaky with adrenaline crash. His teeth are clicking together, a little, but that could be from the cold. Losing the backdrop hadn't heated the place up any, and Loki seems comfortable in his thick cloak and quilted shirt, so he's not likely to change anything for Clint's sake. 

He holds the ring close to his face, examining it, then tells Clint, "Well. I guess I _am_ what's come for you," he says. "In the end." He gives Clint a look. "To save you from yourself, it seems."

"What do you want?"

"To go elsewhere," Loki says, like it should be obvious. "Perhaps someplace bright like Alfheim?"

"How about New York?" Clint suggests, hoarse, and tries to pull his arms loose again. There's still no give.

"Anyplace you like." 

"That easy, huh?"

Loki shrugs, coming closer.

"Want to let me go while you're at it?" Clint asks, and rattles the chains for emphasis, even though what he means is _in New York, at home, and then leave me alone._

"I could," Loki agrees, which isn't _I will_. Clint gives him a narrow-eyed look, waiting for the rest. "I could release you on any realm, and you would still return to me. Or be returned to me, as the case might be."

"It's gonna have to be that second one."

"If you wish to be difficult," Loki shrugs, lifting Clint's shirt the way the goon had, and running a cool hand over Clint’s' side like he's examining a work surface. Clint thinks about trying to knee him in the gut, but before he can try, Loki has him by the throat and is kissing him, body pressing Clint's against the wall--smooth now, but still hard enough that it hurts when his head gets banged against it.

Clint tries to pull away, tries to snarl, "Get off," into the kiss, but it's muffled, both by Loki's mouth and by the hand tightening and cutting off his air. There's nothing compelling him this time. No loss of control or takeover. Just Loki strangling him until light flashes behind his eyes, followed by dark spots with flare-bright edges, blooming and disappearing, taking over more and more of his vision until all of a sudden he can gasp and fill his lungs again.

The cold air burns, but it's hard to slow down his panting. He's breathing fast enough to tip the other way, making himself dizzy, head hanging as he tries to get his senses back online. He feels Loki shift him, his hands at Clint's hips, tugging his clothing. It's followed by a deep, dull numbness at his hip, like he's been hit with something heavy, and before Clint can process it, heat explodes across his nerves, making him jerk and scream. For a second he's sure the goons are back, that Loki was the illusion and he'd been in Russia or a Hydra base or captured by mercenaries the whole time. That they were burning him after all.

Clint tries to curse, but it comes out as a pathetic whimper, garbled and wet. He must have bitten his tongue, because he can taste blood and something is trickling down his chin. "Uh," he manages, and blinks rapidly, trying to clear his eyes. It takes another second to realize that he's crying, breath hitching and eyes running. "What--?"

Loki tugs at one of his arms, and it comes down easily, like Clint had been holding them up on his own, without restraint. He turns Clint's hand palm-up and drops the ring into it. Clint flinches, expecting it to burn, but the ring is icy. Cold enough to hurt and make Clint's fingers jump in confusion, unable to processing the sensation against the searing heat at his hip. 

Clint pulls and his other arm releases, so easy that he tips against Loki and goes down, sliding against his body all the way to the floor, until he's hunched at Loki's feet, with his pants pushed around his ass and the muscles of one leg jerking like he'd been shocked. 

"Take a look at it," Loki tells him. "And remember that you're marked with its sigil, or we'll have to repeat it until it sticks."

"Fuck," Clint manages, still sounding damp and snotty, head resting against Loki's legs, and branded like fucking livestock. Like Loki thinks he's goddamn property. "I didn't _do_ anything." He sounds like a child, angry at being treated unfairly, punished unjustly. The snuffle in his voice isn't doing a thing to help him regain any dignity, but Loki doesn't laugh at the sound of it, petting his head instead, fingers gentle like he really means to be comforting.

"Who said you had done something?" he asks. "I was only finishing the dream you started."


	16. Chapter 16

Clint jerks awake, trashing and disoriented, until he hits the ground with a body-jarring thump and freezes, his heart pounding. It takes a good minute to figure out that he's in his room and has fallen out of bed. He's still in his clothes, and his last memory is of slumping towards an overstuffed armrest out on the couch, so he's not sure how he'd gotten to his own bed. If he'd walked there half-asleep and crashed, or if someone had moved him and managed to not wake him up in the process. It's a bit alarming for the real world to be developing gaps and jumps, but at least when he shoves his pants down, there's no fresh burn. No raw wound to stick to his fingers, but just the ridge of an old, familiar scar he'd picked up being grazed by a bullet half a lifetime ago.

Clint swallows and kicks a little, clumsily untangling himself from the blankets. He's sluggish and slow, and he's banged an elbow and his hip on his way to the floor. At least he hasn't hit his head. That would be a fun one to explain, if he'd knocked himself silly falling out of bed. 

Getting off the floor is more of a chore than it should be. His joints ache like when he's been waiting stock still for hours, lining up a shot, and he's about as tired despite having caught a few hours of sleep. He has to park his ass on the bed for a minute before getting the rest of the way up, to wait for his head to clear when changing position comes with a wash of lightheaded vertigo.

It's quiet in the tower, when Clint finally makes it to his feet and out into the hall. Judging by the darkness extending from the living room all the way into the kitchen, the others had gone to bed and were still there, probably sound asleep. 

That's bad. That means he's alone, with no one for distraction and no one for company unless he counts JARVIS, which veers a little too close to Tony levels of denial and self-isolation for comfort. If Clint starts relying on JARVIS for sanity and conversation, there's an awful lot of smart remarks he'll have to take back.

"What time is it?" he asks anyway, heading to the kitchen while JARVIS figures out if Clint is talking to himself or not. He's already pouring himself cold leftover coffee when JARVIS decides to report,

"It's three forty-five AM, Agent Barton."

That's almost morning. Close enough to four that it makes sense to round up to five, and that's about when Steve starts clattering around most days, so it's not an entirely unreasonable hour to be up and starting breakfast. His head is full of hazy images, half dream, half mission-memory, and Loki tangled through it, inserted into places that he hadn't been before, like a splinter working itself deeper instead of out. Going back to sleep is definitely a no-go. He hadn't meant to nod off in the first place.

Not sleeping isn't a workable long-term plan. Clint's not stupid or delusional enough to think that it is. At best, it's a stop-gap, and a really shitty one at that, because the deprivation seems to make the dreams worse and more vivid, so that sometimes he wakes up not knowing where he is, or when. Thinking he's back with Loki, back at Pegasus, on the Helicarrier with Coulson and Natasha, and listening to a Fury of the past pretend to be briefing them while actually just bragging about his new flying boat. Forgetting which world is real, sometimes, so that the treks with Loki across odd landscapes seem more real than New York and the tower, and he becomes sure he's dreaming up Steve and Tony and the robots down in the workshop. Invented on his own the unlikely reality that is the Hulk.

Loki's starting to seem so much more real that it's almost strange when he _doesn't_ show up several nights in a row, and Clint gets to run through the tangled sleep-logic of an old camping trip mixed up with hunting Natasha mixed up with something about a car until he wakes up feeling off balance and strangely alone. It's way too much like the first few days after the staff, like something had been knocked loose and gone missing. 

He's thinking of Loki even without his being present. It would be an alarming realization if Loki hadn't made such a point about it and if Clint had the energy for more than disquieted resignation. With his mind churning through off-kilter bits of dream--touching Loki, kissing Loki, letting Loki do both those and other things to him--it's not that startling a preoccupation. 

"I was wondering when you'd show up," Clint tells him, when he finally comes walking back into Clint's dream, taking over what had been a warehouse and turning it into a long, arched hallway, the industrial I-beams bending upwards into vaguely cathedral-like stone ribs, soaring far above their heads to support a lofty ceiling covered in an overlapping pattern of what looks like gilded scales, shimmering at them as they walk beneath, reminding Clint of a big fish, but turned inside out.

"I've missed you as well." It's mild but not really friendly. Quietly mocking in a way that Clint's become familiar with, like Loki's trying to turn every interaction into a sparring match, or else thinks Clint is. 

Clint considers rising to it, but the satisfaction of pissing Loki off seems empty and distant at the moment. And stupid, considering he doesn't know where they are, or why, or what he's heading into, following on Loki's heels.

The hall is bright with an ambient, directionless light. Like whoever had generated the image had forgotten to add a source for it. "Where is this?" Clint asks finally, as they move from an enclosed corridor to one with open archways that reveal empty, walled courtyards, then back. Wherever they are, it's huge. "Don't you know any people to put in these places?"

Loki doesn't answer, but a second later, the hall fills with the echo of voices and distant footsteps, like there's crowds somewhere behind the walls, and the next time their path takes them through an open section of hall, Clint can see vague shapes outside, milling around in the courtyard, the sound somehow off, like an audio track that's a beat behind, or like something is wrong with the volume-to-distance. It sounds muted and unreal.

"That's not an improvement."

"Perhaps you'd like to provide the company?" Loki offers, but doesn't adjust anything. The ceiling still glitters above them, but now the place feels creepy and haunted, and Clint hunches a bit in his jacket and tries to ignore the way it sets his hair on end.

The place changes in a blink, like flipping a channel, without even hazy dream logic to take them from one place to the next. They're just suddenly in a large, open room, with walls made up in gold and pale stone, delicately carved over a rougher, dark floor, like everything from the ground up had come from a different era. Here, the room is lit by small lamps, hanging from the ceiling all along the perimeter of the room. Clint's not sure what they're burning, but the warm flicker they cast on the wall means flame for sure. Other than that, the room is as mysteriously lit as the hallway, too bright for the lamps to be the main source of light.

It' very different from the banquet hall Loki had brought him to before. Fussier. Tackier. The sort of place Tony might pretend to like when he was hell-bent on playing irritating rich brat, or that Coulson might like if it was four hundred years old and part of a French museum. It's also empty, and tiered like an amphitheater, with shallow steps leading down to a broad area at what Clint figures is the front of the room, with a row of doors set in the wall, under another row of pale arches.

"What is this? Some kind of space prince lecture school?"

"No."

"Shadow puppet theatre?"

Loki pauses on the steps to look back at him. "No."

"Are we on Asgard?" Clint demands, not following him, calling from the top of the steps.

"We were never on Asgard."

Clint huffs in annoyance, and Loki tilts his head to give him a pitying look. "Do you think you'd be welcome on Asgard? Because _Thor_ deigns to waste his time on your world?"

"Oh, sure. _Now_ you think it's waste of time."

"What patience do you think Asgard has for gnats? Do you think Odin would throw open the bifrost to you on the judgement of his son, who he banished for a fool?"

It's not the story Clint's heard, exactly, but he doesn't say so, following as Loki moves to continue down the stairs, his boots loud in the empty room. "If you wish to try Asgard's hospitality, there is nothing in your way but my brother."

Clint doesn't answer, silently trailing Loki down the steps and through one of the doors at the front, into not just another room, but a whole different place. It looks like a study, with heavy books lining stone walls and an open window that looks out on a bright garden. There's a large desk and a throne-like chair, made of multi-toned wood and too intricately carved to be rustic, even though the walls are simple stone, and rough hewn beams are visible overhead. There's carpet under Clint's suddenly bare feet. Woven, and soft, in geometric patterns and warm colors. Rust red and cream and deep browns to contrast with glass baubles set on shelves and windowsills, in ocean shades of blue and sea foam green. It's a comfortable place. Nothing like the eerie, shadow-haunted halls Loki had led him down.

"Vacation home?" Clint asks, looking, but not moving. 

"Of sorts."

The location change is disorienting. Harder to accept than in a regular dream. It makes Clint wary and tense, even though there's nothing threatening about the place, and Loki seems indifferent to him, more interested in walking along the wall of books and touching his finger to the spine of the occasional volume than in screwing with Clint.

"Why are we here?" Clint asks, because he's sure it's not to kick back and spend an afternoon reading. "What's the deal?"

"Are you in a rush?"

No and yes. Waiting is the worst part of any mission. Of _every_ mission, maybe. Clint can _do_ it when he has to, but he doesn't like it, and waiting for Loki to make a move is even worse than listening to comm silence while Coulson decides on a go-ahead. 

"Stop jerking me around."

Loki huffs. He sounds put upon, and like Clint's ruining a perfectly pleasant afternoon. "Think very carefully," he says, still sounding tired and gently annoyed, not even turning away from the books, "about whether you want to push me."

Clint would like to push him right off a fucking cliff, and then maybe shoot a dozen or so arrows after him for good measure, but manages to not make the comment. Coulson would be proud. For about one second, because after that Clint's saying, "What counts as pushing?"

He expects Loki to hit him. Or maybe throw something at him, considering Clint's out of striking range, but he just sighs like he wishes Clint had taken the very strong hint to shut the fuck up. 

"I just want to know the parameters," Clint says, even though they both know the hedging isn't genuine. He's being a shit, and an intentional, habitual shit. It's so much like harassing Coulson that he almost drops a _sir_ onto the end of it by reflex.

Loki taps the book he'd been about to pull out back into place, then lowers his hand in the slow and deliberate way that Clint's familiar with from any number of situations where he'd gotten his ass kicked, in also very deliberate ways. "Because your communication's been kind of sub par."

He's an idiot. Steve would not be proud of him. Coulson would not be proud of him. Natasha would, probably, not be proud of him. Tony might be, but considering Tony's own track record of dumb calls, that might not be a point in Clint's favor. Bruce would just worry about him.

He's going to be sick. Clint decides. He's got no idea what Loki's thinking, and it could be nothing more than another change of location, but he's going to be sick if it takes another damn second for something to happen.

"Why _don't_ we go to Asgard?" he asks. "Instead of wandering around everywhere else?"

This time Loki does hit him. Turning smoothly and taking one big step towards Clint, before pain explodes across his face. It's simple, straight forward violence, for once, knocking Clint off his feet and cutting his lip against his tooth. It's probably fucked up, Clint thinks, trying to get up and making it as far as his knees, that it's mostly a relief.

"Asgard," Loki says, enunciating carefully like he thinks Clint might not follow if he talks any faster, or uses big words, "is closed to you."

"And you," Clint reminds him, and offers Loki a fair attempt at the do-your-worst grin both Coulson and Steve had tried to wipe from his repertoire.

"And me," Loki agrees, coming to a crouch in front of him, butt on his heels and forearms on his knees, hands dangling casually. He sounds too friendly, and Clint's had to deal with smooth goons before, but with Loki it's impossible to tell if the obvious venom is a flaw in the act or the point of it. "Though I _am_ in fact on Asgard. Right now."

"Congratulations on your five square feet. Sounds like prime real estate," Clint tells him, shifting off his knees to sit on his ass, putting a bit of distance between them, but not enough that it stops Loki from hitting him again. An easy slap that doesn't even tip Loki's balance, but knocks Clint sideways onto an elbow and makes his ear on that side ring. 

"Ow." His cut lip is bleeding. Clint wipes the moisture off his chin then cleans his hand on Loki's rug, leaving finger-wide smears in a cream section. Loki gives him a disgusted look. "Can't take me anywhere, huh?" Clint asks. It comes out rougher than he'd meant it to.

"Beast."

Clint laughs and wipes at his chin again, with the back of his hand this time.

"And with the memory of a beast, I'd bet." Loki still sounds fond and friendly, in that same poisonous way.

"Some beasts are pretty good about that. I hear elephants--"

"Shut up."

Clint shuts, while Loki straightens up then looks down at him, considering. In the silence, Clint can hear himself breathing, fast and too loud. He sounds scared out of his fucking mind, and that's kind of funny, because all Clint feels is dizzy and like his face hurts.

Loki doesn't give him an order, but just hauls him up by his hair. It's short enough that just getting enough grip to do that feels like it's pulling the whole handful out by the roots. "I believe I left you instructions," he says, waiting for Clint to stumble to more steady footing.

"What? I don't--"

That earns him another strike, and Clint falls into sullen quiet, torn lip sucked into his mouth, blood welling against his tongue. Loki ignores his glaring in favor of sliding his free hand down the side of Clint's body, pushing his jacket aside and his shirt up, until his fingers are resting against Clint's skin, light and ticklish against his stomach, at the waist of his pants. "Let's see how well you recall it."

Clint tries to think what instruction he means, but it doesn't come to him until his pants are tugged down, bearing hip and ass and junk, and then the previous dream and the memory of Loki telling him to remember being marked comes flooding back, with the memory of burning skin tight on its heels, and panic bubbling up right after.

"No."

"There's nothing." It sounds like surprise, but the mild put-on surprise that means Loki had expected that and means to fix it.

"Don't--"

Loki's hand stokes over his hip and butt, where the brand had been. "You were meant to keep it in mind," he says. "It's your dream."

Clint tries to shake his head in denial, but Loki's hand is still in his hair, stopping the movement. "Over the desk."

Loki doesn't wait for him to obey, but yanks Clint the few steps over to shoves him onto the desk without effort, and holding him in place just as easily. The hand in Clint's hair shifts to his back, between his shoulders, as unmovable a weight as Thor's hammer and pressing his chest flat to the wood.

Clint struggles anyway, knocking papers and books and bottles of ink to the floor and scattering a vas of long feather quills. His knee bangs against the wood front of the desk as he tries to push away from it, which Loki deals with by getting a fistful of shirt and hauling Clint further forward by it, like he's grabbing an animal by its scruff.

It puts Clint too high on his toes to get any traction, and a moment later Loki's thigh is between his, preventing backwards escape, and offering the threat of a knee to his more delicate parts. Clint grabs the vas and tosses it, but it's a bad angle for anything more than awkwardly flipping it over his shoulder. He does manage to hit Loki's head, but there's not nearly enough force to cause any damage. More a symbolic resistance, Clint thinks, and grabs for a quill that he might be able to stick Loki with. In an eye if he gets really, really lucky. 

Loki's thigh presses harder against him as he fidgets with something at Clint's back, and then his weight eases enough that Clint takes the chance to push up and try to twist so he can get his arm around, but he barely gets his chest off the table before he's slammed back down.

"That _would_ be more interesting," Loki says, like Clint's attempted rebellion is nothing more than potential entertainment. "But if you want this mark crisp, I suggest you hold still."

He's taking the ring off. Clint squirms with renewed effort, until Loki shifts his leg to pin Clint's between his knee and the desk, pushing an arm harder against his back to pin him more firmly. This time the heat isn't a surprise, but it's still as searingly painful and leaves him just as breathless and shaky. 

"It's not--" he pants, when he can. "I didn't _forget_."

Loki releases him, but Clint stays where he is, face sticking to the wood and fingers still jumping with reaction. "Next time maybe you won't."

That takes a few minutes to sink it. "You want me to bring it to the dream. I thought--" That Loki controlled everything. Or would if he wanted. "So this is a participation thing now. I hate those." His legs still feel too shaky to take his weight, but the burn is fading to a throbbing ache, dulling faster than last time, and as soon as Clint realizes it, Loki leans over and kisses his face before straightening.

"Think of it as expanding my five feet," he says. 

"A real fucking kingdom."

Loki makes a sound of agreement, but Clint's not sure if he's agreeing with the statement or the sarcasm. His hands are moving across the desk, idly straightening things. Gathering the quills into a little pile, including the one Clint had crushed, and stacking any papers within reach, before he moves away to gather books off the floor and place them in the shelves, out of range and risk of further damage.

"Do you still wish to know why we don't go to Asgard?"

It's a trap. Something Loki is playing with is making little clicking noises and Clint's not stupid enough to not realize he's working up to something. 

"Or where we are now? Or what for?"

"I'm good."

"Ask me why we're here."

"Why are we here?"

Loki makes an amused sound, not quite a laugh. "No. Ask _me_."

Clint licks his torn lip. It stings, sharper than the ache the burn has faded to. 

"If you want an answer," Loki adds. "Or don't ask the question."

"Is this a game? I don't want to play."

"Loki," Loki corrects, "is this a game." He sets whatever he's carrying down, just outside Clint's vision, making him tilt his head to get a look as Loki picks something out of it. It's a bowl, Clint thinks. The base of it looks like pottery or maybe some kind of stone, and whatever Loki's taken from it is cold, rolling down his back under Loki's fingers, off his shirt and onto skin. "And perhaps." The object is smooth and heavy, moving in easy circles in the small of Clint's back, before Loki runs it lower, not towards the burn like Clint half expected, but towards his tailbone, following his spine to the split of his ass. 

"Or you could think of it as a rule," Loki says, and pushes the thing into him, slow enough that Clint can feel himself stretch around it, then close again after, Loki's finger pressing against him as if keeping the thing inside. "Try again."

Clint shakes his head. He must be sweating because the table is more wet than sticky under his face. Sunlight is falling through the window right on his face, half blinding him in one eye, with the desk blocking his vision in the other. Even in the warmth, his teeth are chattering. "Loki," he starts anyway, obedient. "Is this a game?"

"If you want to see it as one. But we had a rule from before, if you remember." The shadow of his hand moves over Clint's face as he reaches back into the bowl.

"You fuck." Even to himself, he sounds resigned.

"This one is larger," Loki says, ignoring the comment in favor of putting the thing to Clint's mouth. "Make it wet."

It's a glass ball. One of the blue and green decorations from around the room. This one is a bright sky color, made paler under the sunlight. Clint shuts his eyes and puts his tongue to it and tries not to see anything else about it. It's big enough to be uncomfortable when Loki pushes it into him, but not so much that it's painful. It's just an unpleasant stretch, followed by weight and pressure inside him. He can hear himself breathing, fast and panicky as the ball settles.

"Ask something else," Loki prompts. "You had so many questions earlier. Or was the intent to waste my time?"

There's no right answer to that, so Clint doesn't bother trying. Everything Loki does is a retaliation, so he might be alright if he shuts up and tries harder to keep his head down.

"Hawkeye?"

It almost makes him laugh. Of course Loki's not going to let him dodge the issue. He should know that from all the interrogation prep he's undergone. Hell, from the _interrogation_ he's undergone.

"I was making conversation." His voice is a croak. He needs a drink. His mouth is dry and the blood from his lip is on his tongue and teeth and disgusting.

Loki makes an acknowledging noise. An agreeable sounding hum as he rolls another ball around on Clint's back, pressing down just enough that it's actually pleasant, almost like the firm pressure of a massage. "Perhaps you'd prefer to answer my questions, then?" he asks. 

Clint snorts. There's nothing Loki wants to know that he can't take. That he _hasn't_ taken. Clint had spilled his guts under the staff, so this is just a set up, meant to push him into a corner where there's no good choices, so he can choose to betray his friends or himself. At least Clint knows that he doesn't really want Avenger information, or need Clint to give it. That it's just something to goad him with. There'd be no harm in going along with Loki's questions. He could take the option, and avoid punishment while still not hurting anything. It's a dream. It wouldn't matter. No one would know.

"So why _don't_ we go to Asgard?" Clint asks. "Loki?"


End file.
